Atrium European Real Estate, the Vienna-listed shopping centre property company formerly known as Meinl European Land, has appointed Dominique Beghin as chief development officer. This follows the hiring of Nils-Christian Hakert as chief operating officer earlier this month.
Atrium European Real Estate, the Vienna-listed shopping centre property company formerly known as Meinl European Land, has appointed Dominique Beghin as chief development officer. This follows the hiring of Nils-Christian Hakert as chief operating officer earlier this month.
Beghin has over 25 years experience in property development and investment and joins Atrium from Morgan Stanley Properties where he was an executive director with responsibility for European retail investment and sat on the boards of a number of subsidiary companies. Dr. Hakert joined Atrium from Unibail-Rodamco, the pan-European commercial property investor, where he had worked since 2005 as retail director of Central Europe.
The reorganisation of the senior management team got underway earlier this year when Israeli property company Gazit-Globe and US investor CPI Capital Partners Europe carried out a EUR 800 mln buyout of Meinl. Rachel Lavine was named as the new CEO.
The buyout stemmed from a strategic review at Meinl sparked by an investigation by the Austrian stock market regulator into a share buyback scheme.
Atrium is a real estate investment and development company whose primary focus is on retail assets in Central and Eastern Europe, where it operates in 11 countries. At 30 June 2008, Atrium had 160 operating investment properties with a market value of just over EUR 2 bn and a portfolio of development projects with an expected investment requirement of EUR 3.3 bn, of which EUR 700 mln had been spent.
