Investment manager BNP Paribas REIM has closed its fund for investing in logistics properties in continental Europe, after it hit its €300 mln cap.
The Eurozone Logistics Fund (ELF) attracted an additional €100 mln of equity last month. It has a diversified investor base of pension funds, insurance companies and other institutional investors, from France, Italy, Spain, Belgium and Ireland.
The fund is targeting a distribution rate of 5.5% from investments in warehouses located in major European logistics hubs. Its portfolio currently comprises five assets in Germany, the Netherlands and France.
ELF has an overall investment capacity of around €500 mln and was launched by BNP Paribas in July 2017, completing investor closings in 2018 and early 2019.
Henri Romnicianu, BNP REIM’s head of institutional clients, Europe, said: ‘REIM is clearly recognized as a major player in the logistics market. Many institutional investors in Western Europe have recently turned to this typology of assets to diversify their real estate holdings and take advantage of a very positive structural trend of the user market.
'The growth of e-commerce has indeed generated a strong demand for logistics and has allowed this asset class to become more institutionalized in recent years.´
ELF is a SICAV-SIF based in Luxembourg. BNP Paribas has AUM of more than €1.5 bn.
