LaSalle Investment Management has bought a Czech Republic office property for a single investor, understood to be the National Pension Service (NPS) of Korea.
The investment manager said it bought the River Garden I building in Prague for a discretionary co-investment mandate to invest €300m in value-add investments in Europe.
LaSalle did not disclose the client of the LaVA mandate, but NPS is named in a document filed at Companies House.
The mandate is focused on the UK, France and “rest of Europe” markets like the Czech Republic. It can invest across sectors, excluding hotels.
LaSalle said it was targeting properties with strong locational characteristics and in need of intensive asset management, physical upgrades and changes of use to be repositioned as core real estate assets.
Chris Zeuner, head of acquisitions for northern, central and southern Europe at LaSalle, said: “This is the first acquisition by LaVA in the Czech Republic and it represents an excellent opportunity to acquire flexible, high quality office space which can be developed.”
The 19,200 sqm building was acquired for €57m from Slovak company IAD Investments.
It includes 16,593sqm of office, retail and storage space.
Zeuner said the acquisition underlined confidence in the Karlin office market, with LaSalle having bought River Garden II and III late last year for its pan-European open-ended, fund.
“LaSalle has now invested over €220m in Prague on behalf of other funds that we manage, and will continue to do so in order to benefit from the country’s strong and growing economy,” he said.
