German fund manager Garbe has announced the hire of Chris Hornung as managing director and country head of UK for its Industrial Real Estate and Institutional Capital arms.
Garbe Industrial has been expanding beyond its home country over the past two years, with activities launched in the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia. The company also opened an office in France and Italy early in 2021.
Hornung is a British real estate expert with more than 30 years of experience in the property investment market of the UK. He specialises particularly in the segments light industrial, office, retail and residential. He previously served as managing director of Lambert Smith Hampton Investment Management, a real estate investment management company which he helped to found and which grew to €1 bn in assets under management within five years.
’We have successfully invested in the United Kingdom since 1999, as it is one of the most significant and most transparent real estate markets in Europe. We pursue a boots-on-the-ground approach in the context of our Europe-wide expansion. This means we prefer to maintain an on-site presence in order to scan the market for investment opportunities with a focus on the logistics and residential segments,’ said Garbe managing partner Christopher Garbe.
In December Garbe Institutional Capital announced the launch of the Garbe European Residential Fund. Structured as an open-ended special AIF, the vehicle invests in A- and B-Class cities in Germany, the Netherlands, France, the United Kingdom and in the metro regions of Prague (Czech Republic) and Warsaw (Poland). The total investment volume is estimated at €800 mln.
In addition, Garbe Industrial Real Estate invests in the UK on behalf of its pan-European logistics funds. For its new Garbe Logistikimmobilien Fonds Plus III (GLIF+ III) fund, for example, the company plans to invest a total amount of €3.5 bn in Europe. These investments will focus on logistics real estate of the types Core or Core+, supplemented by light industrial and value-add investments in Germany, the Netherlands, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Czech Republic and Poland.
