Finland’s largest property investor Ilmarinen has added stakes in office properties in Amsterdam and Berlin to its real estate portfolio in joint venture deals with France’s Amundi Real Estate.
The pensions insurance company, which has grown significantly in the the last few days as a result of its official merger with Etera on 1 January, said the deals are part of its strategy to increase the international spread of its real estate assets.
Mikko Antila, portfolio manager in charge of international real estate investments at Ilmarinen, said: “Both investments are well in line with Ilmarinen’s strategy to increase its real estate portfolio’s international diversification in a profitable and secure manner.”
Both investments are joint ventures with an open-end real estate retail fund managed by Amundi Real Estate, and Ilmarinen has a 49% in the properties.
Ilmarinen did not disclose the value of the deals.
However, Antila told IPE Real Assets that the value of each of these two individual assets is in the €150m-€170m range.
The Amsterdam asset is an office property called “The Cloud” located to the south of the city’s historic centre, next to Amstel station, it said.
The building has lettable space of around 23,800sqm, and redevelopment work finished last autumn.
It is fully leased, and the main tenants are Amazon, Uber and Spaces, and managed by Hannover Leasing.
The Berlin property is a four-building office asset located on a freehold site in the city centre, called “Rocket Tower”.
It includes 17 and 22-storey office towers and has around 26,200sqm of office space.
The main tenant of the buildings — which were constructed in 1960 and 1999 and refurbished in 2015 to 2016 — is Rocket Internet, a venture capital company investing in e-commerce firms.
L’Etoile Properties manages the property.
Ilmarinen said it had previously co-invested with Amundi Real Estate in an office asset in Frankfurt in 2016.
Antila described Berlin as one of Europe’s most interesting real estate markets, saying the vacancy rate of office premises was at a record low, new construction was moderate and demand for space strong.
Meanwhile in Amsterdam, demand for office space had remained strong, he said, and upward pressure on rental values was likely to continue for the next few years.
“Furthermore, the real estate investment market has recovered well from the post-financial crisis distress, but still offers competitive returns compared to other major European markets,” Antila said.
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