UBS is mulling the launch of a pan-European real estate debt fund, following the successful closing of its UK debt vehicle in January, Eoin Bastible, head of EMEA business development at UBS, told PropertyEU at MIPIM.
UBS is mulling the launch of a pan-European real estate debt fund, following the successful closing of its UK debt vehicle in January, Eoin Bastible, head of EMEA business development at UBS, told PropertyEU at MIPIM.
'We'd love to expand it into continental Europe,' Bastible said in Cannes on Tuesday. 'Our UK debt fund was our first debt fund in Europe. We`ve been in the US debt business for 34 years and have built up a $2.7 bn (€2.4 bn) platform, so we took that blueprint and mapped it into the UK. We raised £241 mln (€308 mln) for the UK fund, which we`d like to be fully invested by the end of this year.'
UBS announced on 15 March that it undertook €7.1 bn in global transactions last year, including €5 bn in acquisitions, up from €6 bn in global transactions a year earlier.
UBS Real Estate carried out almost €1.3 bn of investments and €717 mln of direct real estate divestments in Europe last year. As a result, the Swiss investor features in 60th place in PropertyEU's Top 100 Investors ranking based on 2015 direct real estate transaction volume in Europe.
'We'd like to invest CHF 2.2 bn (€2 bn) in Europe this year, excluding Switzerland,' said Mark Gifford, head of EGI at UBS. `We`d expect the majority of that to be in the UK, Germany and France but also in Spain and Italy. We`re interested in Italian offices in good locations on the edge of the CBD. We're also interested in high street retail and retail warehouses in Italy.'
