Pradera unveils international expansion

Pradera has announced an expansion into new international markets, including the UK, as part of a comprehensive reorganisation and rebranding of the global retail property investment specialist.

Pradera's Continental European business will now be known as Pradera Europe. Its sister company, Cadena's retail investment arm, and the Cadena UK Retail Estate Fund management business will be brought under the Pradera brand as Pradera UK.

The expansion and restructuring of Pradera's business activities follows what Pradera describes as the group's two strongest trading years. In a statement, the firm said the moves will create a powerful, unified retail property brand ahead of a period of further expansion into new global markets and the launch of new funds. The management team is currently considering further expansion into other countries in 2010.

As part of the rebranding of the business, Pradera UK and Pradera Europe’s London headquarters will move to new offices on 1 March 2010 at 60 New Broad Street, London.

Colin Campbell, chairman of Pradera Europe said: 'Mass market retail in Continental Europe has been a good sector to be invested in during the credit crunch because mass market shoppers have, with some variation from country to country, mostly maintained their habitual spending patterns. This has ensured stable and, in some cases, increasing retail sales in most Pradera Fund countries and resulted in good tenant demand, stable or increasing rents and falling vacancy rates at our Funds’ properties.'

Pradera Europe raised a new fund in 2009 - the Pradera Open-Ended Retail Fund - which is aimed at German investors and now has more than EUR 100 mln of equity available for investment in shopping centres and retail parks in the UK and Continental Europe. Given the strong interest being shown in this German open-ended fund, Pradera Europe expects available equity to grow rapidly to at least EUR 250 mln. This would bring the fund's total investment capacity, including third party debt, to around EUR 500 mln.

Pradera is an award-winning specialist retail property fund management business with about EUR 2 bn of assets under management across Europe and UK and more than EUR 1 bn equity under management subscribed by over 50 institutional investors from Europe and the Middle East. The company was established in 1999 by Paul Whight. The teams of Pradera’s subsidiaries Pradera UK, Pradera Europe and Pradera Asia employ a total of circa 75 staff based in the company's nine offices in the UK, Continental Europe and Hong Kong.