Arminius Group, a company focussed on German commercial real estate, has launched a fund with a ‘manage-to-sustainability’ strategy across 30 urban areas.
The Arminius Manage-to-Sustainability fund has a core-plus strategy to acquire up to €1 bn of offices in prime locations throughout Germany in Hamburg, Cologne, Wiesbaden, Mainz, Leipzig among other cities. It wants deal sizes starting from €30 mln and to cap the loan-to-value for the portfolio it assembles to 60%.
Though the open ended Spezial-AIF is badged as core-plus, the company said it was seeking real estate opportunities with significant value-add potential in all three ESG dimensions - protection of the environment, social awareness, and good corporate governance.
As such, it has qualified as an Article 8 fund under the German financial regulatory regime overseen by BaFin.
Christian Molter, managing partner, said: ‘Without improvements to existing structures on a massive scale, neither climate goals nor user requirements can possibly be met. With our manage-to-sustainability approach, we aim to invest into office properties which we are highly confident, based on our ESG scoring, can be transformed in a way which is economically attractive.’
The fund launch comes hot-on-the heels of an Arminius fund launch also targeting €1 bn of offices but categorised as Article 9 because it is deemed to have sustainable investment as its objective by looking to achieve significant reductions in CO2 emissions and energy consumption, sometimes referred to as Dark Green funds under EU Taxonomy.
Article 8 funds are a distinct category as they promote environmental and social characteristics but do not have that as an overarching objective.
