Toronto-listed Dundee International REIT has acquired a 19,500 m[sup]2[/sup] office building in the German city of Hannover. The vendors of the Grammophon Park asset were European real estate investors Activum Capital Management and Stam Europe.
Toronto-listed Dundee International REIT has acquired a 19,500 m2 office building in the German city of Hannover. The vendors of the Grammophon Park asset were European real estate investors Activum Capital Management and Stam Europe.
The deal is the latest in a series of investments by Dundee International REIT in the German market. In the first four months of 2012 the trust completed CA$100 mln (EUR 77 mln) of acquisitions comprising 45,000 m2 of high-quality office space in Germany's top 10 office markets.
The trust raised about EUR 250 mln in its IPO last summer to help fund its first acquisition - hundreds of Deutsche Post real estate assets in Germany. The full value of the deal comes to more than CA $1 bn, split evenly between equity and debt.
Activum said Grammophon Park was an early investment for its first opportunistic real estate fund which was raised in late-2008.
Activum founder Saul Goldstein: 'As an active investor and asset manager, we continually buy and improve buildings. Of course, we then sell buildings once we have created a stable, secure product. In many cases we will continue to manage these to provide a seamless service for tenants.'
Activum is a fund manager that repositions under-valued real estate in Germany. The group was founded in 2007 by Saul Goldstein and currently employs a team of 11 staff. Goldstein is a former partner of Cerberus UK Advisors and was responsible for all European real estate activities.
Activum closed its second European real estate opportunity fund in late 2011 and has already invested EUR 125 mln of the EUR 248.5 mln raised. It plans to invest the remainder in assets located in prime German cities during the next two years.