Schaefer appointed European property head at DWS

After 15 years at the business, Georg Allendorf is stepping down from his role as head of real estate in Europe. He will be succeeded after a six-month handover period by DWS’s current chief investment officer, Clemens Schaefer.

Meanwhile, in the real estate debt business, DWS has promoted Alexander Oswatitsch to take over from Andrea Vanni, who left late last year to join a new venture.

Allendorf is a well-known figure in European real estate. In a note to staff the co-head of DWS Pierre Cherki said real estate assets under management had grown from €16.5 bn in 2014 to €28.4 bn by 31 December 2018, under Allendorf’s leadership.

Prior to taking the top European real estate job five years ago, Allendorf had been head of Germany overseeing the bank’s large open-ended funds.

He was not directly involved with the opportunistic RREEF investing business, which struggled in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. The brand was dropped and so was the investment strategy.

Schaefer has been at DWS since 1998 and before becoming CIO in 2016 he was head of institutional business for property in Europe. Cherki said he had expanded the institutional spezialfonds business from €700 mln when it started, to about €8 bn now.

For the time being Schaefer will also continue in his CIO role but a replacement is expected to be appointed later.

Oswatitsch has taken over the circa €2.5 bn AUM real estate debt investing business which invests in senior loans via a fund for a German insurance company and another for a German pension fund. It has also deployed more than €600 mln in core mezzanine via a mandate for BVK which targets 4.5-7.5% returns.

Vanni has teamed up with Rob Tincknell, formerly head of Battersea Power Station Development Co, forming opportunistic investor Areli Real Estate.

This article first appeared in EuroProperty, PropertyEU's sister publication