Patrizia, the Germany-headquartered global real asset investor, has strengthened the management of its core open ended PanEuropean Property Limited Partnership via the hire of former LaSalle professional, Andrew Hook, as its new fund manager.
Reporting to long-standing fund director, Flavio Casero, the new recruit will help lead the fund and drive the performance and future growth of the portfolio.
Casero said: ‘Andrew is an excellent addition to the PanEuropean team. Having managed institutional core and core plus portfolios across Europe for over 15 years, the breadth of his experience will no doubt be instrumental in further strengthening the profile of the fund and critically suited in supporting our ambitions to consolidate PanEuropean’s standing as one of Europe’s flagship open-ended core real estate vehicles.’
The fund was recently awarded a 5-star GRESB score, reflecting its Net Zero Carbon strategy, and has ranked first amongst its GRESB peer group for sustainability performance.
At LaSalle, Hook managed long-income real estate portfolios, for three UK pension funds. Prior to LaSalle, he spent over 14 years at Aviva Investors where he was most recently a senior director responsible for the £2.5 bn Aviva European With-Profits Fund. He began his investment career in real estate private equity, working for five years at Curzon Global Partners.
The appointment comes as Patrizia updated the market on its 2022 performance.
It managed €6.5bn of transactions globally last year down just 1.5% year-on-year. Around 70% of the transactions were acquisitions.
Throughout 2022, the most active markets were DACH (29%), Iberia (16%) and UK & Ireland (11%). Compared to 2021, in Iberia the share of transactions increased by more than two and a half times and in France and Italy the share of deals doubled.
Philipp Schaper, CEO European Real Estate, said: ‘Despite a challenging 2022 marked by interest rate rises, the war in Ukraine and ongoing supply-chain challenges, Patrizia continued to deliver high-value real estate and infrastructure deals across Europe, as well as in APAC, in line with our strategy to become a global real assets player.’
‘Last year we were able to successfully scale a number of our flagship funds, notably PanEuropean which reached €1 bn in GAV and our Smart Cities Infrastructure Fund (SCIF), as well as launch a new real estate fund in Japan, broadening our footprint in APAC. We are excited to further strengthen our combined real estate and infrastructure expertise to continue driving significant long-term value for our investors.’
Despite a slowdown in residential activity, the company completed a €600 mln forward funding deal to acquire a 10-building residential portfolio in Barcelona on behalf of its Living Cities fund. Notable infrastructure deals included investments in Ottima and Selettra, two of Italy’s leading smart street lighting companies, as well as the acquisition of a majority stake in the Italian bio-LNG producer Biomet.
An acquisition of the largest Dutch logistics property, a distribution centre in Rotterdam, was among the most significant logistics deals of 2022, it added.
