A syndicate of three banks closed a €467 mln loan during the Covid-19 period for AXA Investment Managers - Real Assets’s new pan-European logistics fund.
Natixis, Société Générale and HSBC completed the refinancing of OneLog in a two-part transaction which involved an initial bridge loan for AXA IMRA’s acquisition last December of the six-strong Prism logistics portfolio from AEW, followed by a refinancing of the entire OneLog portfolio.
The Prism acquisition is believed to have taken AXA IMRA’s European logistics fund to about €1.4 bn in value.
Natixis was joint mandated arranger for the financing transaction which was the largest mortgage loan closed by the French bank so far this year.
Emmanuel Verhoosel, global head of real estate and hospitality at Natixis, said his division at the bank had closed circa €2 bn of new business in 17 transactions by June in Europe this year, and that generally across the markets very little new financing activity took place in the last three to four months.
‘In the last three months, bank finance was difficult to find because the syndication market was very slow. The CMBS market in the US was frozen although it has re-opened since the end of May. Which means that very little financing activity took place in either Europe or the US except when committed pre-covid.’ he said.
‘There are limits right now in terms of putting (out) new money, but there are not that many investment transactions. I think things have been carefully managed, so I do not see big stress in the banking sector and big unsold positions. Once the flow of investment transactions has come back, the banks will come back too.’
Natixis distributes much of the debt that it originates and Verhoosel said the bank does have ‘a small backlog of syndicated positions’.
His team has found that insurance companies have been more active than other non-bank lenders in taking inventory. ‘They have targets of volume per year and are short of volume, and they are hoping to do more,’ he explained.
Large underwrites are more complex to place, but he said that good quality loans that had not been syndicated pre-covid ‘are being syndicated today at the pricing.
‘Otherwise, spreads have widened, mostly everywhere on the banking side in France, Germany and Benelux by between 50bps and 60bps.’ The price rise is higher in southern Europe, he added.
AXA IMRA’s logistics fund was launched last year, with Danish pension fund ATP a participant in its first close investing approximately €150 mln.
In January this year the Public Officials Benefit Association (POBA) of Korea said it would make a circa €100 mln investment.
The logistics fund has assets in France, Germany, Benelux, Poland and Italy.
In another large and complex financing, BNP Paribas announced earlier this week that it has syndicated a €432 mln loan which is financing the speculative development of the €650 mln ICAMAP/Ivanhoe Cambridge Arboretum office campus in Paris.
Allianz Real Estate took a €200 mln participation, with BNP Paribas’ own debt fund also investing alongside AEW’s debt fund and Ostrum Asset Management.
On the OneLog transaction, Freshfields advised AXA IMRA and Allen & Overy acted for the lenders.
