This last week of April was a memorable one for PropertyEU in more ways than one.
On Wednesday evening, Augsburg-based Patrizia Immobilien emerged as the overall winner of PropertyEU’s Deal of the Decade Awards. The winner (pictured) was announced during a gala dinner and awards ceremony in Banqueting House at Whitehall Palace in London on Wednesday evening, attended by a select group of Europe’s leading property professionals.
Patrizia won the overall award for its acquisition in 2012 of the giant LBBW housing portfolio in Germany for €1.4 bn, the biggest property deal in Europe that year. The German company also claimed the top prize in the residential category of PropertyEU’s Deal of the Decade competition which was co-sponsored by Real Capital Analytics (RCA).
The details of Patrizia’s winning deal – which aligned a group of German and international institutional investors for the first time ever - have been well documented in our own publications over the past few years along with Patrizia’s own spectacular rise. Indeed, the German company has repeatedly headed a number of our regular deal and dealmaker rankings in the past 10 years and has rarely strayed beyond the top 5 for many of them. Headed by Wolfgang Egger, Patrizia has truly gone from strength to strength as it has expanded both its geographic and sector focus.
We could devote an entire article to our overall Deal of the Decade winner – and will do just that in our upcoming magazine alongside a comprehensive round-up of the other nine winners in their respective categories. In fact, we could probably write a book about the deals of the past decade and the individual winners!
Other pressing engagements
This week also marked the debut of our dedicated private equity investment briefing in London hosted by CapitalWatch editor Robin Marriott. Held at the London headquarters of UBS Asset Management, the event attracted an unprecedented number of attendees and marks a new direction for our Investment Briefing team which aims to drill more deeply into topics such as private equity and finance in the coming months.
One of the key messages that came through during the event was that the wall of money is more massive than anyone could imagine. As Thomas Wels, head of real estate and private markets at UBS Asset Management, told the briefing, there is too much money around that needs to be deployed. ‘I feel there is a certain desperation out there.’
There is also a very logical reason why international investors continue to target Europe, Ric Lewis, CEO of Tristan Capital Partners, added. ‘Europe is less fully priced than the US and Asia,’ he said. ‘For us it is the more interesting play.’
Our first private equity event in London was held on the very same day as our inaugural Deal of the Decade Awards ceremony. This fact was underplayed during both events but represented a tour de force for our publisher and events director Richard Betts.
As if that were not enough, PropertyEU also launched the first edition of ICSC Europe’s new Informed magazine earlier this week at the ICSC annual conference in Warsaw. Produced in partnership with PropertyEU’s dedicated retail real estate publication RetailWatch, Informed brings retail real estate industry news and ICSC members’ insights from across Europe. You can read the digital version of the publication on our revamped RetailWatch website.
Most influential woman of the decade
And it doesn’t end there. During our Deal of the Decade ceremony in London this week, we also announced the most influential woman in real estate in the past decade, a new supported by Prologis, a staunch proponent of diversity in the boardroom and actively engaged in a campaign to achieve that goal. The winner kept us in suspense as to whether she would arrive on time until the very end of the evening due to a mix of logistics factors - unfortunately beyond the control of either Prologis, PropertyEU or the winner herself!
We are happy to report that she did - finally – make it on time to celebrate her award, shortly after a thought-provoking 'fairytale' told by Andy Watson, formerly CIO at LaSalle Investment Management. Watson told us a tale of the past decade, looking at Berlin and Paris - with a happy ending for both. And just as we had all given up hope, our most influential woman of the decade managed to defeat the twin obstacles of a delayed Lufthansa flight and a taxi with limited directional sense to sweep through the gates of Whitehall Palace and claim her award. A happy ending for all!
However, we have now decided to keep our readers in suspense as to her identity in the same way that she – unintentionally – kept our audience in suspense. The formal announcement will be made early next week and we can assure you that she is somebody worth waiting for!
As many of you head off into a long weekend to celebrate May Day, I am pleased to report that the enthusiastic response to our first awards event this week has inspired us to make a tradition of celebrating the most innovative and transformational deals in Europe.
In the coming weeks we will start inviting our readers to submit their candidates for the Deal of the Year and following responses to our inaugural awards event we’re now thinking of introducing a number of new categories.
We’re already looking forward to the party!
Judi Seebus
Editor-in-chief
