US private equity group Blackstone has sealed the acquisition of the headquarters of newspaper La Nazione in Florence for around €40 mln, PropertyEU has learned.

US private equity group Blackstone has sealed the acquisition of the headquarters of newspaper La Nazione in Florence for around €40 mln, PropertyEU has learned.

The asset, sold by landlord Poligrafici Editoriale, will be transferred to a new Italian fund managed by BNP Paribas Sgr. It has been leased back by Poligrafici Editoriale on a long-term rental agreement.

CBRE advised the vendor on the deal.

The acquisition is the latest to be carried out by Blackstone in Italy. Earlier this year, the US private equity group also bought the headquarters of another Italian newspaper, Il Corriere della Sera, in the Brera district of Milan for about €120 mln.

The complex is home to Italian publishing group RCS, the owner of Il Corriere della Sera.

Last week, PropertyEU revealed that Blackstone is buying a portfolio of government-let office buildings from Fondi Immobili Pubblici, a close-ended fund managed by Investire Immobiliare Sgr, for about €160 mln.

The portfolio is believed to include five offices, two of which located in the city of Milan and one each in Genoa, Turin and Como.

Investire Immobiliare, part of Banca Finnat Euramerica, hired CBRE in May this year to market the assets which consist of a total of 800,000 m2 of space worth some €800 mln.

Launched in 2004, FIP was the first real estate fund to be created by the Italian government as part of a major privatisation effort and owns around 400 buildings across the country. The assets for sale are largely located in Northern Italy, in the regions of Lombardy, Piedmont, Liguria and Friuli-Venezia Giulia, as well as in the Lazio and Tuscany regions with some located in the South - Abruzzo and Apulia. They are home to public administration offices including public pension funds INAIL, INPS, the ministry of transport, the internal revenue service, the customs agency, the police, the ministry of labour, and the territorial agency.

All the properties are leased with a master lease agreement to the Agenzia del Demonio, the country's public real estate agency, with a contract running to December 2022. In total, the portfolio generates gross annual rents of over €63 mln.