Germany's largest pension fund investor Bayerische Versorgungskammer (BVK) has already taken part in six European real estate deals with a combined volume of €1.5 bn so far this year, according to PropertyEU Research.
The performance equates to 75% of the €2 bn volume, which made BVK the largest direct buyer of European real estate among global institutional investors last year, according to RCA data featured in PropertyEU’s new CapitalWatch publication. Norway’s massive oil pension fund was in second place with €1.7 bn of investment.
BVK has €69 bn under management across a range of asset classes. Norman Fackelmann (pictured) heads the property investment business.
The scale of its real estate strategy was highlighted yet again at the start of the second quarter with the latest in a series of major retail property investments. Acting through funds managed by Universal-Investment, BVK acquired a portfolio of 90 German retail properties from Corestate Capital for €687 mln on 3 April. Corestate Capital had built up the portfolio via various purchases on behalf of its club deal programme, and will continue to provide investment and asset management services for the portfolio.
In March 2017, Hines and Universal-Investment deployed €190 mln in two transactions in Spain on behalf of a €1.3 bn high street mandate from BVK. In mid-January the pair acquired five Copenhagen retail assets for €119 mln. These were the eighth and ninth deals for the mandate. In its biggest single-asset deal of its current retail investment strategy, BVK, acting through Universal-Investment, acquired the Liffey Valley mall in west Dublin for €630 mln in December 2016.
Corestate and Universal also run a BVK fund that purchased a micro-living asset in Hamburg for €64 mln in January. And, BVK ended the first week of April with the joint acquisition of the London exhibitions business, Venues, for €347 mln.
This story appears in the April edition of PropertyEU Magazine
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