Germany's Corpus Sireo put up for sale

Corpus Sireo, Germany's largest real estate asset manager, has been put up for sale by its owners, savings banks Sparkasse KölnBonn, Stadtsparkasse Düsseldorf and Frankfurter Sparkasse.

The three savings banks have appointed investment bank Lazard to sell Corpus Sireo in a process which is expected to fetch over €300 mln.

Corpus Sireo manages €15.6 bn of assets and is currently 50% owned by Sparkasse KölnBonn, with the remaining 50% held by Stadtsparkasse Düsseldorf and Frankfurter Sparkasse.

'We can confirm that the Corpus Sireo shareholders, the municipal savings banks of KölnBonn, Düsseldorf and Frankfurt, have put the company up for sale. However it is still very early into the transaction process,' a Corpus Sireo spokesperson told PropertyEU.

Corpus Sireo's German real estate related services platform provides asset management, investment management, residential project development and investment brokerage services in Germany. In addition, Corpus Sireo owns a 3,600-strong residential real estate holding which is understood to be part of a separate disposal process.

According to news website CoStar, isag, Johnson Controls, CR Investment Management, CBRE and JLL are all thought to be considering bids for the company, whose service business in 2013 posted an EBITDA of €24.6 mln.

Corpus Sireo has its headquarters in Cologne and employs 525 people in 11 German offices and one office in Luxembourg. The company's assets under management total €13.7 bn, of which €10.4 bn, or 76%, are commercial real estate properties.

In addition, €1.6 bn, or 10%, is managed through fund structures, and around € 0.4 bn, or 2%, are prime residential project developments in cities including Cologne, Düsseldorf, Munich and Frankfurt.