Pbb provides EUR 22m facility to Pradera CEE fund

German lender pbb Deutsche Pfandbriefbank has provided a facility of about EUR 22 mln to the Pradera Central & Eastern Fund for the acquisition of a shopping centre in the Polish city of Gdansk.

Deutsche Pfandbriefbank said EUR 14.6 mln was an acquisition facility and EUR 7.15 mln related to VAT facilities. The transaction was signed on 29 April 2011. Completion is scheduled to occur in the course of May 2011.

The shopping centre, Galeria Osowa, comprises 69 retail units over a gross leasable area of 13,500 m² and is anchored by a Real hypermarket. It is the fourth Polish retail property to be acquired by Pradera's Central & Eastern Fund.

Although relatively modest in terms of volume, the financing deal underlines the return of Deutsche Pfandbriefbank, formerly Hypo Real Estate bank, as a major player in European property financing.

The Hypo Real Estate Group was bailed out by the German government in 2008 during the credit crisis and was subsequently nationalised. Since then the group has restructured, with Deutsche Pfandbriefbank being created from the combination of Hypo bank and the Depfa Deutsche Pfandbriefbank subsidiary.

Commenting in the May edition of PropertyEU Magazine, Bernhard Scholz, member of the management board responsible for real estate finance and public sector finance, said the bank will be accelerating its lending activity this year. Deutsche Pfandbriefbank hopes to do around EUR 8 bn in new business, doubling last year' s loans originations in the process.

Of the EUR 8 bn in new business that Deutsche Pfandbriefbank is betting on, 'more than two-thirds' is likely to be in the form of real estate loans, Scholz told PropertyEU. 'We' d expect around half our new business to be generated in our home market, with around 30% coming from the UK and France combined. The remaining 20% would likely come from the CEE region and from Scandinavia,' Scholz said.

Read more about Deutsche Pfandbriefbank and about Pradera in the May edition of PropertyEU Magazine. Click on the link below to subscribe.