Our guide to the biggest players in European real estate, as measured by deal volume in 2020, reveals some big risers and fallers in the year of the pandemic.
Swiss Life Asset Management is this time ranked number 1 with €8 bn of acquisitions and disposals. In second place is US company Hines on €7.5 bn, followed by Blackstone in third position on €7.4 bn. This is the first time for several years that Blackstone has not led the table.
Gordon Darroch, who compiled the ranking on behalf of PropertyEU, said 2020 was clearly a quieter year for many real estate investors compared to 2019.
He said: ‘Of the 53 companies for whom we can directly compare figures, the median change in transaction volume is -21.72%. Only 15 did more business in 2020 than in 2019. It was a much quieter year, which you also see in the much lower bar for 100th place – €742 mln compared to €1.37 bn. As an illustration, last year KanAm Group was 81st with €1.65 bn of transactions. This year, it is 83rd but the transaction volume has shrunk to €979 mln – a 40% drop.’
Top end of the table
Swiss Life rose to 1st from 4th position last year; Hines advanced to 2nd from 11th. Meanwhile, Aroundtown climbed into the 4th spot from 23rd, and Ares into 5th from 46th place. There were several other significant movers. Adler Real Estate appears in 7th place, boosted by the merger with Ado Properties. Goldman Sachs was also a big riser into 8th position compared to 27th. CBRE Global Investors rose to 10th after 49th last time, and Greystar was placed 11th, a gigantic leap up from 94th. Deka moved up to 13th place after being ranked 35th a year ago, SBB of Sweden climbed to 14th from 85th, and Union Investment advanced to 15th from 24th.
Amid the big fallers were Patrizia, which was 2nd in the last ranking and only 12th this time, and LaSalle which dropped from 6th to 17th place.
The decline in trading volume can clearly be seen in the cumulative deals of the Top 100. They reached a combined total of €237 bn in 2020, which is down 34% on the €300 bn recorded in 2019. This means the average annual deal volume last year was €2.3 bn compared with €3 bn in 2019. The five biggest buyers turned out to be Ado/Adler Real Estate, Ares, AXA, Allianz and Aroundtown – coincidentally, all companies beginning with the letter A!
US firms traded most
Investors in the ranking are broken down by country of domicile. Again, firms headquartered in the US traded the most in 2020 (€61.2 bn), followed by German companies (€47 bn) and French (€33 bn), and then UK players (€27 bn). Last year, Korean investors were the 7th most active group, but this time they were only 13th, probably due to a combination of factors such as inability to travel, suspension of plans to sell assets that were due to be sold, and more attractive yield opportunities arising in the US.
Companies in the ranking are divided in the data between listed or unlisted property entities. Non-listed property companies accounted for 81% of the market.
Lars Huber, head of Europe for Hines – an unlisted company which climbed into a new high of 2nd place – said the group was probably helped by having local teams on the ground. Said Huber: ‘That was probably one of the biggest differentiators in the industry over the last year: those that were local were a lot less impacted.’
The full ranking appears in the June issue of PropertyEU Magazine, also accessible for subscribers via the PropertyEU app
