Peakside seeks the 'Holy Grail' of Polish institutional capital

Independent real estate investment firm Peakside acquired Allied Irish Bank’s Polish real estate fund platform in early April in part to open up the possibility of accessing domestic institutional equity.

'The Holy Grail of Polish fundraising is to be able to tap into Polish institutional money,' Peakside co-founder Roger Barris told PropertyEU.

Poland has a number of large insurance companies and pension funds who are under-represented in real estate

These institutions face a number of legal restrictions and other issues at the moment in regard to fund investment but some of these issues are now under review.

Barris stressed, however, that the first two priorities for Peakside in Poland relate to the EUR 600 mln of assets owned by the two funds, Property I and Polonia II, which are managed by the former AIB platform.

Peakside and private equity firm Partners Group have also acquired AIB's minority stakes in both funds.

Polonia I was established in 2003 with an initial equity commitment if EUR 100 mln. The fund has a scheduled maturity date in July 2013, which Peakside believes will probably have to be extended for a year to avoid having to sell the assets too quickly.

The fund owns five office properties in Warsaw, two in regional Polish cities and two in Budapest. The portfolio also includes two logistics assets. The fund's largest assets are all office properties: Atrium Centrum, Warsaw; Poznan Financial Center, Poznan; and East-West Business Center, Budapest.

'The next priority is to actively asset manage the portfolio to enable the sale of all the assets managed by the platform over the next three years,' Barris said.

The third task is capital raising for a new fund, but this will have to wait until at least 2013 while the first two priorities are worked on.

See the May edition of PropertyEU Magazine for more on Peakside’s plans in Poland. Click on the link below to subscribe