A handful of bidders has submitted first-round offers for a portfolio of Polish shopping centres which Cromwell Property Group put on the market earlier this year, according to the latest edition of PropertyEU's sister publication Europroperty.
Names on the shortlist, according to sources, include local players Griffin Real Estate and Newbridge as well as Bucharest- and Johannesburg-listed Nepi Rockcastle.
Cromwell Property Group is looking for around €550 mln for the portfolio, which would represent a yield of around 6.5%.
The second round of bids is due on 20 April.
Eastdil and CBRE are advising on the sale. Both parties declined to comment.
A sale to Griffin could potentially mirror a previous retail deal the company engineered late last year on behalf of Echo Polska Properties (EPP), the REIT-like listed vehicle that is transitioning to a pure
retail property player in Poland.
In December a consortium comprising Johannesburg-listed Redefine Properties, US investment firm Pimco and New York-listed Oaktree Capital and co-managed by Griffin Real Estate, agreed to buy a portfolio of 28 retail assets in Poland.
The portfolio was sold by funds managed by Ares Management, AXA Investment Managers – Real Assets and Apollo Rida for around €1 bn. A €692 mln package of non-strategic assets in the portfolio was subsequently divested to EPP.
Nepi Rockcastle is the merged CEE-focused specialist created in mid-2017 from the combination
of South African European Property Investments (NEPI) and Rockcastle Global Real Estate. In the past 18 months Nepi Rockcastle has stepped up its presence in Poland and other CEE countries
with acquisitions in Bialystok, Krakow, Budapest and Sofia.
Newbridge is a Warsaw-based investment and development firm and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Somerston Group, a privately owned investment house. Since June last year, Newbridge has
acquired a portfolio of four shopping centres across Poland in the cities of Krakow, Torun, Lodz and Wroclawek.
The Cromwell portfolio now for sale includes six first generation shopping centres and two hypermarkets totalling 250,000 m2 in seven cities.
