German investment and asset manager ECE has raised €740m for its second European shopping centre fund.
The Hamburg-based company’s European Prime Shopping Centre Fund II, backed by sovereign wealth funds, pension funds and insurance companies, has bought an Italian asset, La Cartiera, near Pompeii.
The fund will invest up to €2bn between now and late 2018.
As reported late last year, ECE Real Estate Partners, the fund management company of ECE, raised €500m in a first close for the fund. The firm said fund II had also been committed to by the Otto family and ECE employees.
Volker Kraft, managing director at ECE Real Estate Partners, said the Cartiera centre had achieved a “strong market position” in its catchment area in the south of the Gulf of Naples.
The 30,000 sqm property, which opened in 2012, is let to 115 tenants, including Italian grocery chain Conad, electrical retailer Mediaworld and H&M.
ECE Italia has been managing the property.
The deal is the company’s second in Italy, having bought the Megalò centre in Abruzzo for its first fund.
The second fund, which recently bought its first centre in Lüdenscheid, Germany, is also investing in Poland.
