Barings Real Estate Advisers, formerly Cornerstone Real Estate Advisers, has acquired the Berliner Volksbank headquarters at Budapester Strasse 35 from a Benson Elliot fund.
Barings, which bought the asset on behalf of an international seperate account client, plans to demolish the property to build a new office development on the site.
The vendor is a consortium, comprising a fund advised by Benson Elliot Capital Management, London; the Klingsöhr Unternehmensgruppe, Berlin; and Rockstone Real Estate, Hamburg, as local partner. The property represented the last asset in the consortium's Berlin office fund.
'We identified an early opportunity to crystallise the value we created in this well-located package of Berlin properties,' commented Philipp Braschel, Benson Elliot partner and head of Germany.
Benson Elliot closed BEREP IV, its third pan-European value-add fund, in June 2016. The fund was oversubscribed, and has approximately €700 mln of capital at its disposal. To date it has made 10 investments across six counties, and completed four early realisations, delivering an equity multiple above 2.5x.
'This is a key transaction for our business in Europe and represents the first major development opportunity we have acquired on behalf of this particular client in Europe,' said Gunther Deutsch, managing director and head of investment transactions Europe at Barings Real Estate Advisers. 'It is an exciting project with huge potential which we have been able to source by utilising our strong local teams. We now look forward to finalising our plans for and subsequently executing the redevelopment of this landmark Berlin asset.'
The purchaser's legal advisers on the transaction were King & Spalding and HauckSchuchardt. Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek acted for the vendor side.
