Pan-European real estate investment manager Ærium has completed acquisitions worth €203 mln in the UK and Germany, across the retail and office sectors, as well as €153 mln of disposals.
The deals include a core retail portfolio in Southern Germany and a value-add office building in Berlin bought for €110 mln, where the retail assets comprise four shopping centres totaling 37,613 m2, on average 98% let, located in the Baden-Württemberg and Hessen regions.
In the UK, Ærium has acquired a 9,174 m2 core office asset at 8 Fenchurch Place in the City of London for €93 mln, from a joint venture between ARES Management and PMB Holdings. The five-storey property is fully let to five tenants.
'It has been encouraging to experience such a breadth of transactional activities in the market across Europe over the past six months. This has been both on the sell side, where we have drawn wide interest from prospective buyers as we undertook divestments from our matured funds, and on the acquisition front, with so many exciting investment opportunities coming to market. We look forward to integrating the latest additions to our portfolio, and delivering on our intended asset management plans to extract maximum value from these new investments,' commented Steven Broch, co-chief investment officer, head of investments for Germany and Southern Europe, Ærium.
Disposals were strategically made on behalf of four funds, which have reached maturity. These include 10 retail assets and an office asset across Germany which were sold for €93 mln in aggregate, plus two retail assets let to Carrefour in Slovakia which were disposed for €15 mln. Three Swiss assets - an office, a shopping centre and a logistics building - were sold for €45 mln.
'We continue to see compelling opportunities across Europe to selectively grow our separate accounts through the addition of a diverse range of assets, from core down to value-add,' concluded Robin Carr, Ærium's co-chief investment officer, head of investment for UK and Northern Europe.
