Amundi Real Assets has raised initial capital from five investors for its first co-mingled real estate senior debt fund, EuroProperty can reveal.
Bertrand Carrez, head of real estate debt, said the fund will have its first close on around €150 mln in the next few days. ‘The five initial investors should include four from France and one from Italy and we are in advanced discussions with five to 10 other potential investors. We are targeting €400-€500 mln by the end of this year,’ he said.
The fund will take participations in loans yielding margins of circa 200-250 basis points. ‘We have already secured, from different bank partners, €120 mln of investments across four deals which all have investment committee approval and should be executed at or just after the fund’s first close,’ added Carrez. ‘They span hotel, office and mixed-use and two are in France, one is in Italy and the mixed-use property is in the Netherlands.’
Amundi’s real estate debt business was formally launched last May with a circa €500 mln segregated mandate from Crédit Agricole Assurances to invest in lower risk senior debt than the fund, yielding margins of 150 basis points over Euribor. French bank Crédit Agricole is one of Amundi Asset Management’s shareholders and founders.
On behalf of the in-house mandate, Carrez’s team has invested €350 mln in six deals in France, Italy and Spain at loan to values of 50%-60%. The largest is a circa €100 mln participation in a French hotel deal. Carrez declined to comment on the detail of that investment, but last October, Crédit Agricole Corporate & Investment Bank (CACIB) led a €300 mln financing for Henderson Park’s €550 mln acquisition of the Westin Paris-Vendôme hotel.
Amundi Real Assets is one of Europe’s largest real estate investors. Its latest significant acquisition is the ‘TOP 5’ portfolio of offices in the German cities of Hamburg, Frankfurt and Berlin. Amundi closed on the deal at the end of December on behalf of two funds, paying WarburgHIH Invest just over €570 mln for the assets.
The buildings are: the 18,000 m2 Puris office at 10 Potsdamer Platz in Berlin; 8,700 m2 Schillerhaus and similarly sized Oper 46, Bockenheimer Anlage in Frankfurt; and 14,000 m2 Brooktorkai 20, HafenCity and Valentinshof in the CBD, in Hamburg.
Amundi has also been selling. In the UK the French asset manager has just divested the last two assets from the Aqua portfolio which it acquired from Union Investments in 2015 – 11 Westferry Circus at Canary Wharf and 8 Fenchurch Place, both in London.
And last month EuroProperty reported that Amundi had appointed Lazard to sell all the properties owned by two of its retail funds, Amundi RE Europa and Amundi RE Italia.
This article first appeared in EuroProperty, PropertyEU's sister publication
