Trigranit set to pay out EUR 70m in dividends

Trigranit expects to pay a total of EUR 70 mln to its shareholders for 2011. Including the planned payment this year, the Hungarian company will have paid out EUR 600 mln in dividends since 1999, CEO Árpád Török said.

The shareholders include Hungarian businessman and Trigranit founder Sandor Demjan; Hungarian banker Sándor Csanyi; Canadian businessman Peter Munk; and listed CEE property company Immofinanz.

Török spoke to PropertyEU last Tuesday during the Property Investment Forum in Budapest which is hosted annually by business media group Portfolio.hu.

Török said Trigranit has continued to develop despite the ongoing financial and economic turbulence and general scarcity of bank lending in the market.

He said that referring to the 'CEE market' was a misnomer as it is a collection of individual countries with very different economic conditions. Hungary's economy is weak and the property market is seeing little development or investment compared to Poland or the Czech Republic. Trigranit has a land bank which would enable it to develop over 200,000 m² of offices and 60-80,000 m² of retail space in Budapest but Török said the company is in no rush to do so. K&H bank is moving 2,500 staff into a new office property, developed by Trigranit in Budapest, this year.

The company has several projects in Poland. In September Trigranit broke ground on its EUR 160 mln development project in Poznan. Phase I of the Poznañ Glówny project involving the construction of the 5,500-m² railway station is due for completion in May 2012, in time for the European Football Championships. The entire scheme, including a 60,000-m² shopping centre, will be finished in the second half of 2013. The mall, including a total of 230 shops, will be known as Poznañ G³ówny City Center. Trigranit is also in the construction phase for the 140,000 m² Poznan City Centre scheme. Last June, Trigranit completed the first phase of a 50,000 m² office project in Krakow.

Trigranit is a private company and is active in seven CEE countries, including Russia. It has a EUR 2 bn-plus portfolio of completed assets and a EUR 4 bn-plus development pipeline, making it the largest real estate developer in Central and Eastern Europe and among the top four overall in Europe.