Invesco Real Estate has bought a Paris office building for an Asian state pension fund.
The deal is the investment manager’s third in Europe for the separate account mandate, understood to be Malaysia’s Kumpulan Wang Simpanan Pekerja or Employees Provident Fund (EPF).
Invesco Real Estate would not comment, citing client confidentiality.
The UK-based firm said the buyer of the Espace Lumière, in the Boulogne district, was also behind its purchase of Tour Prisma in La Défense in the first quarter of last year.
Rory Morrison, senior director of fund management, said the 28,494sqm property, let to Canal+ on a long-lease, diversifies its client’s portfolio within the Paris office market.
Morrison said Invesco Real Estate had built up a portfolio of €700m for the client since the beginning of last year.
”We are assessing additional opportunities in Europe, focused initially in France and Germany,” he said.
AEW Europe, which sold Espace Lumière, last year also sold a German office portfolio to EPF for around €315m, according to Malaysian media reports at the time but unconfirmed by EPF corporate affairs manager, Ahmad Fauzi Kamarudin.
EPF, Malaysia’s largest provident fund, has also invested in the Australian logistics sector with Goodman. EPF’s real estate assets include One Shelden Square, 11-12 St James Square and the Battersea Power Station in London.
As reported last year, EPF receives about MYR2bn a month from its 13.6m members, who make a compulsory 11% monthly contribution, while employers add a further 12%. The fund’s assets under management were almost MYR600bn at the end of March 2014. EPF allocated 27% of its total investment in Malaysian government securities, 28% in bonds, 39% equities, 4% in money markets, and 2% in properties and infrastructure.