Malaysia's Employees' Provident Fund (EPF) has made a comeback to the French property market with the acquisition of an office complex in the western Parisian suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt, PropertyEU has learned.
Malaysia's Employees' Provident Fund (EPF) has made a comeback to the French property market with the acquisition of an office complex in the western Parisian suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt, PropertyEU has learned.
EPF, which manages €150 bn in assets, is understood to have closed the 29,000 m2 office deal last Friday through asset manager Invesco Real Estate, according to well-informed market sources. The transaction amounts to €220 mln.
The asset houses the headquarters of Canal + at Quai Point du Jour. AEW, on behalf of two institutional investors, hired JLL and BNP Paribas Real Estate last year to market the asset with a guiding price of €220 mln.
Designed by Christian de Portzamparc and built in 2000, the asset is a campus-style building providing a total of 29,000 m2, fully let to Canal+ with a remaining seven-year lease term.
EPF made its first foray into France last March with the acquisition of Tour Prisma, a grade A office tower in Paris' La Défense business district from Canada's Ivanhoé Cambridge.
The 23,150 m2 property is about 90%-let to tenants including French law firm Fidal, which in 2013 agreed to occupy over 13,000 m2. It also benefits from an average unexpired lease term of over eight years.
The transaction is the latest by Invesco Real Estate in France. In January, the asset manager sold an office building at 46 rue de la Boétie in the eighth arrondissement to Japanese group Mitsubishi Estate.
The deal, representing Mitsubishi's first direct investment in France, involves 2,400 m2 of office space multi-let to six firms, including Allianz Real Estate and The Financial Times.
