Real estate investment manager AEW Europe is on the brink of launching a pan-European debt platform as a follow-on vehicle to its Senior Loan Fund to capitalise on ‘strong appetite’ for debt vehicles, Rob Wilkinson, CEO of AEW Europe, has told PropertyEU.
Real estate investment manager AEW Europe is on the brink of launching a pan-European debt platform as a follow-on vehicle to its Senior Loan Fund to capitalise on ‘strong appetite’ for debt vehicles, Rob Wilkinson, CEO of AEW Europe, has told PropertyEU.
‘For such a platform to be meaningful, €3 bn would be a good target size’, Wilkinson said. ‘We feel there should be strong appetite for a pan-European real estate debt fund, particularly given that bond yields are so low and that the fund would offer returns that are several percentage points above government bond yields. The fund will also offer investors a chance to diversify,’ he said.
Further details regarding the fund and its investment remit have yet to be disclosed, although Wilkinson said that marketing will start in April. The new debt fund will be the natural – albeit larger - successor to the firm’s Senior European Loan Fund launched in 2012 and for which it has raised €323 mln.
AEW Europe has acquired more than €1 bn of value-added and opportunistic assets since 2010 and is anticipating ‘significant growth’ in the sector over the next few years, Wilkinson said.
‘I think we could see a significant shift to value-add and opportunistic assets in the next three-to-five years, especially when it comes to clients who are keen to find relative value amid increased competition,’ he said. ‘There is an increasing part of the investor universe that is moving towards core plus and value-add, given that core yields are still under downward pressure today.’
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