AXA IM - Real Assets shops in Belgium and the UK

AXA Investment Managers - Real Assets has completed the acquisition of the Woluwe Gate office building in Brussels, as well as the purchase of a data centre in the south-east of England.

The Belgian acquisition was made from AG Real Estate on behalf of the Caesar Fund, a regulated fund for Italian institutional investors.

Woluwe Gate comprises 8,919 m2 of space spread across seven above-ground floors as well as benefiting from 123 parking spaces. It is currently fully let to seven tenants with strong covenants on a range of lease lengths of up to nine years. The building was fully refurbished in 2007.

Guy Van Wymersch, head of Benelux at AXA IM - Real Assets, commented: 'Woluwe Gate is an excellent addition to the Belgian portfolio of our client, being acquired in a fully let, modernised state, and located in a popular area of the Brussels office market offering promising real estate fundamentals.'

In the UK, AXA Investment Managers - Real Assets has bought a data centre which is located in the South East of England for £28.1 mln (€39 mln). The asset is fully let to a major global blue chip tenant.

The acquisition is in line with AXA IM - Real Assets’ strategy to diversify its investor offering into alternative asset classes. The investor now manages a primarily European portfolio of data centres on behalf of clients which is valued at €200 mln following this acquisition, and is currently reviewing a pipeline of further investment opportunities.

'This is a high specification data centre which is let to a blue chip tenant on a long lease. It is indicative of the type of investment we want to make as we continue to build our data centre portfolio,' said Hideki Kurata, head of alternatives & special situations at AXA IM - Real Assets.