PGGM and Redevco target European retail assets with new €550m JV

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Dutch pension fund asset manager PGGM and Redevco have set up a €550m partnership to target retail assets in European.

PGGM Private Real Estate and the investment manager have launched Urban Retail Ventures to invest in shopping and leisure destinations.

The joint venture has been seeded with the acquisition of Promenade Sainte-Catherine, an urban scheme in the centre of Bordeaux.

Urban Retail Ventures is part of PGGM Private Real Estate’s investment strategy to set up strategic partnerships and build platforms with prominent real estate managers that have expertise in specific local markets.

In July last year, the €218bn Dutch pensions group and Rockspring Property Investment Managers launched a €250m Berlin tech office joint venture.

For Redevco this is the third European retail real estate joint venture the company has entered into, following earlier partnerships with UK institutional investor Hermes and US private equity firm ARES.

Redevco will be responsible for the asset management of Urban Retail Ventures.

Andrew Vaughan, Redevco’s CEO, said: “This joint venture brings together Redevco’s proprietary ‘City Attractiveness’ research model and specialist retail market investment teams across Europe, with the deep financial resources and expertise of PGGM.

“By combining big data factors and in-depth local knowledge, we can pinpoint those city and micro-locations that can produce a ‘halo effect’ allowing premium operators in these sectors to maintain their edge over mid-market competitors, making these destinations the most likely winners in the current retail landscape which is both innovating and being disrupted at an astonishing speed.”

Mathieu Elshout, a senior director of private real estate at PGGM, said: “The PGGM and Redevco joint venture underlines our belief in top retail destinations, offering the right mix of functions and outperforming over the long term.

“As a long-term investor, we believe in this research-driven approach. The aim is to make this portfolio completely carbon neutral by 2030, which will include the emissions of our retail tenants.”