Aberdeen aims to sell EUR 1b of Degi Europa assets by year-end

Aberdeen Asset Management plans to sell almost EUR 1 bn of assets from its Degi Europa fund which is being liquidated by the year-end, Hartmut Leser, head of distribution and country head for Germany and Austria, told PropertyEU.

'We're talking to both domestic and international buyers at the moment. The first deal could be announced within the next six weeks. Our priority is simply to sell these properties for the best prices we can. We are mainly selling offices across Europe,' Leser said.

The German regulator BaFin has given Aberdeen until September 2013 to liquidate the fund - which targets private investors - although the fund manager would like to complete the process earlier, if possible, Leser said. Aberdeen announced last October that the fund would be liquidated, after admitting that it could not guarantee ‘that liquidity will suffice to satisfy requests for redemption'. At end-June 2011, Degi Europa had EUR 1.5 bn of assets under management.

Aberdeen has already started to return capital to its investors: in January, it returned around 20% of the fund - or EUR 250 mln - to investors and will return an additional EUR 60 mln to them this month (July). Next January, Aberdeen intends to return another EUR 300 mln to investors, Leser said.

Some investors - including German funds and Luxembourg-based investors - have asked Aberdeen whether it could sell some assets in Degi Europa and have them put into a tax-efficient vehicle for insitutional investors. 'We haven’t done this yet but it's a possibility we're considering. However, we’re talking to investors both about single asset sales and portfolio sales, so it really depends on what investors want to do,' Leser said.