Asset manager Hines Italia confirmed on Thursday that it is teaming up with Qatar's sovereign wealth fund to launch a new fund which will take over a portfolio of 90 Deutsche Bank branches, as tipped by PropertyEU.
Asset manager Hines Italia confirmed on Thursday that it is teaming up with Qatar's sovereign wealth fund to launch a new fund which will take over a portfolio of 90 Deutsche Bank branches, as tipped by PropertyEU.
PropertyEU reported earlier this week that a joint venture of Qatar Investment Authority and Hines was the frontrunner to acquire a portfolio of assets from landlord and occupier, Deutsche Bank.
Hines and the Middle Eastern sovereign wealth fund are believed to have emerged ahead of a joint venture of Kennedy Wilson and Prelios as local asset manager as well as a partnership of Colony Capital and asset manager IdeaFimit in the bid to acquire the assets, which are being leased back by the German lender under a 12-year rental agreement.
The fund, known as Italian Banking Fund (IBF), will be managed by Hines Italia Sgr and will have QIA as its only unitholder.
The bank branches, with a value of €134 mln, were the last to be owned by Deutsche Bank out of the 358 the lender operates in Italy. PropertyEU understands that the fund will also be transferred at a later stage Deutsche Bank's Italian HQ at Milan’s Bicocca area, which currently generates an annual rental income of €8 mln.
'This is a confirmation of the business strategy we launched some years ago and which led us to invest over €1 bn in Italy over the last 12 months, especially in the retail, logistics and service industries,' commented Manfredi Catella, CEO of Hines Italia SGR. 'With this additional instrument and together with such a strategic partner as Qatar Investment Authority, which will be the largest and only unitholder in IBF, we are entering the banking segment, which we see as particularly interesting and rife with opportunities for us to seize in Italy.'
The fund will start with €300 mln already being committed, he added.
QIA and Hines Italia have partnered on a number of other operations in Italy recently, including the purchase over the summer of the Credit Suisse headquarters in Milan from US developer-investor Tishman Speyer.
The asset at Via Santa Margherita 3 was put on the market through Cushman & Wakefield in early March and traded for over €110 mln in cash.
The 15,000 m2 asset is multi-let to bank Credit Suisse and BPVN. Currently fully leased, the property was completely refurbished by Tishman Speyer in 2006 and generates rents of around €6 mln a year.
In early 2013, Qatar Holding, which is part of QIA, also agreed to buy a 40% stake in the flagship Porta Nuova mixed-use development in the city centre of Milan from Italian fund manager Hines Italia Sgr. The deal amounted to some €800 mln, valuing the project at a total of €2 bn.
The deal is the latest by the Qataris in Italy. Last week, investor Constellation Hotels acquired the St Regis Grand Hotel in Rome's central Piazza della Repubblica for €110 mln.
The vendor of the luxury hotel is Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worlwide. Constellation Hotels is the holding company of Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani, a former prime minister of Qatar.
The hotel provides a total of 138 rooms and 21 suites.