GERMANY - Invesco Real Estate has made another purchase for the German doctors' pension fund NAEV, this time in Prague.

Invesco RE had recently purchased a property in Paris for its pan-European segregated mandate for the €10bn Nordrheinische Ärzteversorgung (NAEV).

It has now confirmed another acquisition for the portfolio in Prague's Andel district near the city centre.

The building, erected in 2007 and with 4,200 square meters of office space, is fully let to five international tenants including UBS, Maersk and Boston Scientific.

It was bought from the Austrian developer UBM Realitätenentwicklung for an undisclosed sum.

Elsewhere, real estate investment company Patrizia opened its office in Stockholm as part of a restructuring.

Henrik Österberg, head of residential acquisitions for the Nordic region, was named head of Patrizia's new offices in Sweden.

The move is part of the expansion strategy following the takeover of LB Immo Invest. 

Wolfgang Egger, chairman of the board at Patrizia, said: "As international transactions in the European residential property sector are on the rise, we wanted to increase our presence in the markets."

He said the Scandinavian countries were among the most attractive residential property markets in Europe and that Patrizia had been invested in Sweden and Finland "for some time now". 

Patrizia was the first non-Scandinavian residential investor in the Finnish market.

Egger said Patrizia Scandinavia would also play an important role for its retail property fund and that the Nordic market would be "a good diversification" for investors.

Patrizia recently announced the finalisation of the takeover of LB Immo Invest by renaming its two subsidiaries for residential and retail property, respectively. 

Finally, Colliers has continued its series of market outlooks for Germany with an overview of the country's retail market.

The total transaction volume in Berlin, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt/Main, Hamburg, Munich and Stuttgart increased to €4.5bn in the second quarter, slightly above the level for the previous year.

However, this performance was largely down to two cities: Frankfurt/Main, with a 281% year-on-year increase, and Hamburg, with a 148% increase.

The other cities saw "decreases of various sizes", according to Andreas Trumpp, head of research at Colliers International in Germany.

He said major transactions as seen in the first half of 2010 did not take place this year, while in some cities, far more but smaller deals were signed.

According to Colliers, almost 40% of investors are based outside Germany.

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