POLAND – The European Property Investors Special Opportunities 3 fund (EPISO3), advised by Tristan Capital Partners, has acquired a portfolio of five shopping centres in Poland from Charter Hall Retail REIT.
The sale, estimated at €174.5m, is part of Charter Hall’s plans to exit the European market to refocus on its core domestic market in Australia.
Four of the assets are located in southwest Poland, while the fifth is located in the northwest part of the country.
The transaction, which is scheduled to complete by the end of third quarter, is the second in Poland for Tristan since November, when it closed the €210m acquisition of the Warsaw Financial Centre in a joint venture with Allianz.
This deal was first announced in August last year.
Daniel Harris, managing director of investments at Tristan Capital, said the company liked the relative strength of the Polish economy, and believed these were good retail assets that would be enhanced through further investment.
Meanwhile, in a report released earlier this month, Jones Lang LaSalle said the city of Poznan in Poland offered good investment attractiveness.
John Lang noted that Poznań, with 550,000 inhabitants, was one of Poland’s economic powerhouses and had a GDP in 2010 of around PLN40.2bn (€9.3bn), double the Polish average.
According to the report, the modern office supply in Poznań at the end of Q1 this year reached nearly 293,000 square meters, making it the sixth largest office market in Poland.
In the first three months of 2013, new office space was delivered within the Galeria MM scheme (2,400 square meters).
An additional 23,000 square meters is planned for the period between the second and fourth quarters, including Malta House, Nobel Tower and Temida Offices.
Agnieszka Sosnowska, research analyst at Jones Lang LaSalle, said that, over the last six years, office stock had increased by 170,000 square meters, equivalent to 57% of the total existing modern office space in the city.
“This means Poznań has joined the elite of Polish cities in terms of construction activity,” she said.
“Although, the majority of available office space is located in the city centre, we expect a gradual decentralisation of the market.”
