GERMANY – Pradera has converted an open-ended real estate fund into a Spezialfonds.
The UK-based investment manager Pradera had launched the Pradera Open-Ended Retail Fund (POERF) in December 2009 via the platform of the Service KAG IntReal.
Since then, the fund limited to institutional investors had grown to €145m and has now been converted into an open-ended Spezialfonds.
Pradera said the conversion had become necessary because "changes to the German investment law made it impossible for important investors to hold open-ended funds".
The company noted that all investors in the fund had agreed to the "complex restructuring" and that the fund was ready now to continue to grow towards the initial target of €500m.
Warburg-Henderson, another real estate fund manager, had taken a similar step in January.
According to IntReal, further providers of open-ended real estate funds will take this step of converting their holdings to a Spezialfonds to "make it possible for institutional investors to stay on over the long term".
In other news, Henderson Global Investors and Palmira bought a logistics centre in Winsen, south of Hamburg, for its real estate Spezialfonds, Henderson German Logistics Fund.
The 13,000 sqm building with a gold DGNB certificate was finished in 2010 and the sole tenant is luxury furniture producer Dedon.
The building was bought for an undisclosed sum from a fund managed by Captiva Capital Management.
It is the fifth acquisition in five months for the fund issued in summer last year with earlier purchases made in Bad Dürkheim, Bruchsal, Elmenhorst and Herrenberg.
In other news, IVG purchased Zeil 94, a retail property in Frankfurt, in a club deal for two unnamed Spezialfonds.
The 7,800 sqm property was built in 1989 and was refurbished over the past year. It was sold by a vendor represented by CR Investment Management for an undisclosed sum.
Elsewhere, Augsburg-based Patrizia has established its first joint venture in Great Britain via its subsidiary Patrizia UK (formerly Tamar Capital Group).
The partner in the joint venture is Oaktree Capital management and the first two purchases were made in Birmingham and Bracknell.
In Birmingham, the joint venture bought the office building Edmund House for £8m from a client of Aberdeen Asset Management and will refurbish it.
In Bracknell it purchased office building The Arena from SWIP for £7m advised by Jones Lang LaSalle for both deals.
