Pan-European investment boutique Primevest Capital Partners has appointed Peter Helfrich as managing partner and Gaston Hupkens as head of operations and partner to accelerate its growth in data infrastructure, residential real estate, parking properties, communications and other investment opportunities in related real asset sectors as they arise.
Helfrich joins Primevest CP from Patrizia where he was head of Southwest Europe; country manager Netherlands and a senior managing director for over seven years.
He is also currently a member of the advisory board of Dutch Smart digital car park operator ParkBee and a member of the advisory board of the Patrizia Foundation. Prior to this, Helfrich worked and lived in Sweden, Germany and Italy for CBRE Global Investors EMEA and ING Real Estate Investment Management.
Hupkens has also moved from Patrizia where he was head of asset management Benelux and head of operations & finance. He has also held positions at ABN Amro Bank, Bouwfonds IM, Rabo Real Estate Group, Corio and Deloitte.
Following these appointments, the board of Primevest CP will comprise Helfrich, Hupkens and partner Bart Pierik as head of infrastructure. Partners Hans-Peter Renk and Bas van Dongen complete the senior management team, who lead a group of 40 professionals from offices in Utrecht and Berlin. The company has €1.8 bn of assets under management across six sector-focused funds and two individual institutional mandates.
Helfrich said: 'Primevest sits at the epicentre of the great converging trends in communications and data infrastructure, affordable residential real estate and urban mobility that are defining the emerging ‘Smart City’ landscapes of the future.
'We have received strong backing from our major shareholder CommonWealth Investments to rapidly scale up and extend the highly successful current business areas through both organic growth and corporate acquisitions, to position the company to target these unprecedented opportunities for our investors.'
Added Hupkens: 'Our ambition is to be in the vanguard of innovation in providing the infrastructural backbone of the new digital economy, while also integrating the highest levels of sustainability across our real estate investments.
'Primevest’s prime differentiator is that we sit at the interface between investors, operating companies and municipalities, facilitating interaction and understanding between all these partners and ensuring investment flows into essential upgrades to digital networks and the installation of the superfast broadband highways which are lacking in many of Europe’s cities.'
