German property giant Patrizia has completed the sale of a French logistics portfolio to real estate funds managed by Blackstone in an off market deal worth €260 mln.
Comprising just over 362,721 m2 in 10 properties, the portfolio was assembled off market by Patrizia's TransEuropean Property Limited Partnership VI following the fund launch in 2016. The portfolio is 100% leased to tenants including Kuehne and Nagel, Geodis, Rhenus, Honeywell and Amazon.
Blackstone has engaged Patrizia to continue to manage the portfolio on its behalf.
This transaction mirrors the sale of a portfolio of seven French logistics assets totalling 302,675 m2 from TEP V to Blackstone for €233 mln in 2017.
'Credit must go to our transaction and local asset management teams for their hard work in assembling and stabilising this portfolio over the past three years and then securing the Fund’s exit,' said Paul Hampton, head of International Funds at Patrizia. 'To be retained to work with Blackstone on the management plans going forward is clearly especially pleasing.'
Patrizia has also recently acquired two logistics warehouses situated on the border between Amiens and Poulainville, totalling 77,865 m2, on behalf of TEP VII, the successor to TEP VI, bringing Patrizia’s AUM in France to €1.34 bn.
TEP VI, the sixth fund in PATRIZIA’s TransEuropean series, is a diversified, leveraged pan-European investment programme with a focus on office, retail, residential and industrial properties in large metropolitan areas of core Western Europe (including the UK). Launched in 2016, the strategy is to assemble a cash-flow generative portfolio that can be aggressively ‘managed to core’, utilising the firm’s Europe-wide platform and, more specifically, its hands-on asset management or operator-style approach. The programme can be classified as ‘value-add’ in terms of risk, albeit income is expected to be a key driver of the 15% pa target return.
New fund
Patrizia is currently in the final stages of marketing for TEP VII which launched in 2018 and is expected to have a total firepower of €1.5 bn. TEP VII will pursue a cash-flow driven, value-add strategy primarily across the office, industrial and residential sectors in continental Europe and the UK. It favours an ‘operator style’ approach which draws on Patrizia’s local transaction and asset management expertise.
Since the launch of TEP VII and its second close of €250 mln in February 2019, eleven investments across Madrid, Paris, Barcelona and Berlin, totalling €505 mln, have been either contracted or placed under exclusivity.
New head of France
Separately, Patrizia said that it has named Lionel Nicolas as country manager France, in addition to his current position of head of transactions for Patrizia France and Italy.
Based at the company’s Paris office, Lionel has responsibility for Patrizia’s French operations. He already oversees all transactions in France and Italy, working closely with the Patrizia's team in Milan.
With over two decades of experience in the French real estate market, Lionel joined Patrizia in 2015. Since then he has been responsible for the acquisition and sales programme across the region. A law graduate of Panthéon-Assas University in Paris, he was previously managing director of Cordea Savills France and has also held positions at Macquarie Bank and Grosvenor Continental Europe.
