Fresh from setting up a value-add platform in France, asset manager La Française has announced it is forming a joint venture with privately-held group Acofi to focus on the management of debt funds.
Fresh from setting up a value-add platform in France, asset manager La Française has announced it is forming a joint venture with privately-held group Acofi to focus on the management of debt funds.
La Française will take an initial 20% stake in the partnership, with plans to increase the interest to 50% over the next six years.
Acofi, which is 70% owned by its principals, said the deal will allow it 'to accelerate and strengthen its analytical and research skills to build innovative management tools, including loan funds'.
La Française's CEO Xavier Lépine commented: 'We are entering a period in Europe of disintermediation of financing the real economy, and investors can now choose between the volatility of marked-to-market assets or a market premium for the illiquidity of unlisted debt. Hence our desire to reinforce our position in debt and cash-flow assets in which many players can no longer participate due to the aftermath of the financial crisis. [..] These comprise real estate loans, infrastructure financing (resulting from national overindebtedness), local community credits and of course business loans.'
La Française has gone to great lengths to build a European asset management platform over the past year. It recently hired DTZ AM's former boss Patrice Genre to set up La Française Real Estate Partners (La Française REP), a new platform dedicated to managing French value-add and core/core plus mandates. The platform is eyeing some €2 bn of investment in the next three years, according to its newly appointed president.
Also this year, La Française formed a strategic partnership with UK-based Forum Partners, and shortly thereafter signed an over-the-counter agreement to acquire Cushman & Wakefield Investors (CWI), the investment management business of Cushman & Wakefield.
