The Chinese owner of German company BGP Group is in exclusive negotiations to sell the residential property firm to a consortium comprising German investment manager Union Investment and housing specialist ZBI Zentral Boden Immobilien Gruppe.
The deal would bring with it 250 staff and a portfolio of 16,000 homes.
A spokesman for Union Investment would not confirm speculation that the price being negotiated is around €2 bn.
ZBI and Union said in a statement that they hope the deal will strengthen their joint residential real estate fund platform and significantly increase the volume of funds under management.
Erlangen-headquartered ZBI, which has been designing residential real estate funds for private and institutional investors since 2002, currently manages a portfolio of about 39,000 homes.
‘The BGP Group has an excellently positioned platform for the efficient and sustainable management of residential real estate holdings,’ said Jörg Kotzenbauer, head of corporate development at Union Investment and member of ZBI’s supervisory board.
BGP Group CEO Worna Zohari (pictured) said the planned partnership provides excellent prospects for the firm and its employees. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2019.
BGP Group’s portfolio is focused on high-growth metropolitan areas. Half is located in Berlin with the rest concentrated in Cologne, Düsseldorf, Münster and Kiel.
China’s sovereign wealth fund CIC, advised by Morgan Stanley Real Estate Investing, is thought to have paid the bulk of the €1.1 bn purchase price when BGP Group was sold by BGP Holdings in October 2016.
CIC and its co-investors outbid German property groups Vonovia and Deutsche Wohnen. Austrian company Conwert, now part of Vonovia, had attempted to buy the company in 2015.
This story first appeared in EuroProperty, PropertyEU's sister publication
