'We don’t get prizes for increasing our assets under management,’ Nic Fox, partner at Europa Capital says in an interview published in the March edition of PropertyEU Magazine. 'It’s all about delivering returns. We prefer to be judged by returns rather than by AUM. That is the mainstay of our business.'
'We don’t get prizes for increasing our assets under management,’ Nic Fox, partner at Europa Capital says in an interview published in the March edition of PropertyEU Magazine. 'It’s all about delivering returns. We prefer to be judged by returns rather than by AUM. That is the mainstay of our business.'
It is a fact of life in the current market: experienced investment managers with a proven track record like Blackstone, Cerberus and Lone Star are squeezing the niche opportunistic players in the European landscape with their blockbuster funds. While these heavyweight US investors continue to pile on their assets under management, many smaller players in the value add and opportunistic space like London-based Europa Capital have seen their businesses shrink, disappear or at best stabilise.
Europa Capital, for example, has seen its AUM hover between €2-3 bn for 10 years now. But Nic Fox, partner and head of Middle Europe is philosophical about the relatively small size of his company. ‘We don’t get prizes for increasing our assets under management,’ he told PropertyEU in an interview at the firm’s London headquarters. ‘It’s all about delivering returns. We prefer to be judged by returns rather than by AUM. That is the mainstay of our business.’
Europa Capital is currently fundraising for its fifth €750 mln value-add vehicle, for which it is targeting a 15% IRR, in line with returns delivered for its previous four pan-European vehicles.
Click here for the full interview (PDF).
Nic Fox also spoke to PropertyEU TV during MIPIM in relation to how US investors view European real estate. Click here for the YouTube video
