Siemens transfers 9 million m[sup]2[/sup] to its real estate arm

German electronic equipment manufacturer Siemens is bundling the group's entire real estate portfolio in its international real estate arm Siemens Real Estate (SRE). Siemens currently has around 18 million m² of office and production space worldwide, and SRE previously administered only about half of it. The remaining space is managed by approximately 4,000 employees working for the Sectors and Regional Companies. The company believes that concentrating resources at SRE will make the management of company real estate more efficient.

'We want to have a stronger focus and better transparency in our real estate management as well. By bundling our real estate management worldwide, we expect to increase efficiency by over EUR 200 mln by 2012,' said Joe Kaeser, Siemens Chief Financial Officer. This increase will primarily be achieved through more efficient space utilisation, the disposal of unneeded property and the optimisation of service and supplementary costs by bundling resources worldwide.

SRE currently oversees real estate assets comprising 34 million m² of building land and 17.7 million m² of rentable space at more than 3,000 sites around the world, and has direct profit and loss responsibility for half. Its portfolio includes office, industrial, warehousing and specialty real estate. In the current year to September 30, SRE posted revenue of EUR 1.665 bn, with income before taxes (IBIT) of EUR 356 mln.

With this move, the number of SRE employees worldwide will climb to 6,200. SRE handles the company's real estate development, utilisation and management as well as consulting services.