The UK arm of European real estate manager Catella has raised £102.2m (€122m) for its debut fund, which will focus on investing in locally listed property companies.
Catella APAM’s Strategic Equities I, which secured the commitments from institutional investors, will focus on identifying “mispricing within the UK-listed real estate sector”.
Simon Cooke, founding shareholder of Catella APAM, and Ben Kennedy, head of investment and research at Catella APAM, will lead Catella APAM Strategic Equities I’s investment strategy.
Kennedy said: “The real estate sector has become more operationally intensive and complex, as asset owners begin to acknowledge their role in providing a service to customers rather than just passively holding assets. This is likely to create a more disparate distribution of returns as the gap between winners and losers widens.
”Our access to actionable, real-time asset data and hands-on expertise gives the fund a predictive edge in assessing companies’ current and future value trajectory. Adopting a value investment approach in UK listed equities after a period of re-pricing should offer strong risk-adjusted returns to our investors.”
Cooke said: “I believe the listed sector is often undervalued compared to the wider market, as is the strategy, assets, and management teams, particularly following economic downturns.
“The sector currently trades at a significant discount to NAV, dragged down by recency bias and consolidated by the backward-looking valuation process.”
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