CS Euroreal sheds over EUR 310m of assets in Germany, UK

Credit Suisse's frozen Euroreal open-ended property fund has completed three sales in Germany and the UK for a total value of over EUR 310 mln.

In Germany, CS Euroreal has sold two retail properties in Dresden and Leipzig to Deutsche Bank's real estate fund management arm, RREEF Investment. The transaction price - which is above the assets' value - amounts to around EUR 140 mln.

In the UK, CS Euroreal has divested the St. Katharine's Estate office building in the City of London to the Malaysian Employees Provident Fund. The acquisition price exceeds the asset's market value of EUR 172 mln.

The Leipzig asset was bought by CS Euroreal in 2005 and offers 22,200 m² of mixed-use commercial space. It was sold to RREEF's grundbesitz europa open-ended fund. The main tenant of the asset is the Stuttgart-based textiles company Breuninger. In Dresden, a special investment fund managed by RREEF Spezial Invest has bought a 8,000-m² high-street asset leased to H&M, Esprit and New Yorker.

NAI Apollo's investment division and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer advised the vendor on both sales.

The 18,000-m² London asset fully let to several tenants including Mercer Human Resource Consulting and Marsh & McLennan Companies. CS Euroreal has held it in its portfolio for the past six years.

Credit Suisse Asset Management said the sales will increase the liquidity of the fund to some EUR 1.3 bn, or 21% of the fund's assets. Since the suspension of unit redemptions in May 2010, the fund has divested a total of 11 properties with an overall value of more than EUR 880 mln. 'We are confident that we will be able to come up with the liquidity required to reopen the fund before the year is out,' said Karl-Heinz Heuss,
managing director of Credit Suisse Asset Management Immobilien Kapitalanlagegesellschaft.