GLOBAL - Allianz Real Estate has acquired a majority stake in a new retail development in Frankfurt, Germany, due for completion in the autumn of next year.

The 80% stake was bought from CA Immo Deutschland and ECE, which both retain a 10% stake in the shopping centre, valued at €360m.

The Skyline Plaza is being built as part of a new development - the Europaviertel - spearheaded by CA Immo near the city's main train station, as well as the Frankfurt Messe.

It will include 180 retail units over two levels and also house a spa, as well as a roof garden.

Meanwhile, Prudential Real Estate Investors (PREI) has acquired the commercial portion of a New York high rise on behalf of German institutional clients.

The Laurel, a 31 storey, class A, mixed-use building on the city's Upper East Side, has around 19% of its floor space devoted to commercial tenants, with all of it let to clients including Cornell University's medical research facility.

While terms of the deal were not disclosed, PREI revealed that it was bought on behalf of institutional investors in a fund managed for German clients.

In other news, Great Ropemaker Partnership (GPE) - a joint venture between the BP Pension Fund and Great Portland Estates, is to buy two central London properties for £132m (€152m).

The two properties both have existing tenants, with news producer ITN resident in both 200 and 214 Grey's Inn Road. The news organisation still has 12 years left on its tenancy, with an annual rent of £500,000.

GPE's investment director Ben Chambers said the buildings offered an attractive yield of 6.4%, while the building stood to increase in popularity due to the ongoing development works surrounding King's Cross train station, as well as the construction of the Crossrail train and expansion of the Thameslink route.

Great Portland Estates has also acquired a property in London's West End for £120m, leasing the entire site back to previous owner Royal Mail Group until June 2013 for a total of £4.6m.

While there is currently a planning application by Great Portland pending on the development, the company will withdraw this and submit new plans next year.

Royal Mail will further see a share of profits from the redevelopment, should they arise, with a priority profit of 12% return going to Great Portland prior to the UK postal service's 1.5% share.

A further redevelopment in London has been proposed by Rockspring Property Investment Managers, which has secured planning permission for the renovation and expansion of a grade-A office building in the City of London.

Under plans, lettable area will expand by a third, while the company is targeting BREEAM's excellent rating for the redevelopment.

In other news, Union Investment has bought Crowne Plaza's Amsterdam Zuid hotel for an undisclosed sum with its German open-ended fund, marking the vehicle's first Dutch transaction.

The hotel, set for completion in late 2011, will include conference rooms, gyms and more than 200 rooms, while being located conveniently for a train to the city's airport in Schipol.

Finally, German-UK real estate joint venture Warburg-Henderson has bought a retail property near Paris for its real estate Spezialfonds RZVK-Immo-Fonds, which had been set up exclusively for the Rheinische Versorgungskassen.

The property in Creil, 60 kilometres to the north of Paris, is close to completion, and in January 2012, the international DIY store group Castorama is moving in.

The company has rented the 18,000 square meter space for 12 years.

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