Partners Group has bought a real estate portfolio in Finland and Sweden for €300m at a discount on the secondary market.
The Swiss private markets investment manager acquired the retail and office properties from investors in a fund managed by Nordic investment manager Niam.
The 380,000sqm portfolio, which was built up in 2006 and 2007, comprised the remaining assets in Niam Fund III. The fund will be wound up but Niam will continue to manage the properties with Partners Group.
Fund manager Urban Ehrling said he was leaving Niam following the transaction.
Partners Group said it had “provided an off-market solution, allowing an exit for investors and time to maximise the value creation potential of all remaining assets over the next three to five years”.
Fabian Neuenschwander, vice president in real estate secondaries, said: “We believe the Finnish and Swedish real estate markets will continue to perform well in the coming years and see this transaction as a unique opportunity for our clients to benefit from this development.”
As part of the deal done in June and July, Partners Group had been involved in negotiating the refinancing of all the portfolio’s existing debt facilities as well as the buyout of minority shareholders and joint-venture partners.
It had also been involved in preparing a mezzanine facility in the capital structure of one of the investments at preferential terms.
Niam said it would work with Partners Group over the next few years to execute a strategy for generating value in the properties.
“Niam is very familiar with these properties because we have been successfully operating these assets since the build-up of the portfolio,” said Pekka Salakka, senior director at Niam.
Partners Group has made a number of transactions on the secondary market in recent years. Last month it said it bought 31 investors out of the $1bn (€776m) troubled Chinese property fund Trophy Property Development.
