Hines, Universal-Investment buy first UK property for BVK

Hines and Universal-Investment have made the first UK property deal for Bayerische Versorgungskammer’s (BVK) European high-street strategy.

The €62bn German pension fund bought a retail asset in Scotland as part of a €1.3bn mandate awarded earlier this year.

Hines and Universal-Investment are targeting European prime high street retail assets for BVK.

Hermes Investment Management sold the building in central Glasgow at 229-249 Buchanan Street, 65% let to three fashion and sports brands, with one unit vacant.

High street retail assets worth more than €100m have also been bought in Oslo and Milan.

Lars Huber, co-chief executive at Hines Europe, said good progress was being made in building a portfolio for BVK.

“We are continuing to target other assets meeting this criteria across 20 countries in Europe and look forward to announcing further transactions in the near future,” Huber said.

Chris Taylor, head of private markets at Hermes, said the sale came at “an appropriate time” in the market cycle for a value-add asset in that location.

“We will be redeploying the capital from selling the property into other opportunities,” he said.