CEE developer-investor Futureal said on Tuesday that it has signed the largest loan agreement of the past decade for the development of a shopping centre in Hungary.
Lenders UniCredit and Erste Group have agreed to provide a €150 mln, 10-year term loan to finance Buda's biggest shopping centre on a 50/50 basis.
Etele Plaza, with a gross area of 137,000 m2, is already under construction. It will provide 55,000 m2 of rentable space over 180 shops located in the immediate vicinity of Futureal Group's 65,000 m2 office development project, the Budapest One office park.
The centre will also feature a supermarket, restaurants, cafés, a multiplex cinema, a gym, a children’s play centre and nearly 1,300 parking spaces.
‘The cooperation with UniCredit and Erste Group is unprecedented in this area in the past 10 years in Hungary,’ said Futureal's Pál Darida, treasury and financing director.
‘Our goal is to satisfy our clients' financing needs with competitive project and syndicated loans tailored to their individual needs, thereby contributing to the implementation of their major projects. We kept this in mind also in the case of Etele Plaza, one of the most significant projects of the Central and Eastern European property market, envisaged by Futureal Group,’ added Gábor Vörös, head of financing at UniCredit Bank.
‘Erste Group and Futureal Group have been in close business partnership for more than a decade. In the course of our cooperation, our bank has participated in the financing of several successful office development projects, underlining our strong commitment to financial partnership and value creation. We are happy that this successful relationship has come to a new milestone with the financing of Futureal Group’s new flagship project, the Etele Plaza Shopping Mall,’ said Zoltán Balázs, head of real estate and structured finance at Erste Bank Hungary.
