Union Investment aims to invest up to EUR1bn by year-end

German fund manager Union Investment is hoping to invest up to EUR 1bn in European real estate by the year-end, its chairman of the board Reinhard Kutscher told PropertyEU.

‘We have already invested around EUR 500 mln so far this year and would like to invest an additional EUR 500 mln to EUR 1 bn before the end of the year. We already have a few deals in due diligence,’ he said.

Union Investment is currently looking at deals of between EUR 20 mln and EUR 150 mln and is considering offices, logistics, hotel and retail assets in markets including Germany, the Nordic region and Benelux countries, Kutscher added.

However, he conceded that good quality assets are hard to come by: ‘There’s not much good quality product available and it’s a competitive market. Shopping centres are also difficult to find at the right price,’ he said.

The German fund manager has been on an acquisition spree in recent months. At Expo Real on Wednesday, it announced that it had acquired a multi-tenant office building in Düsseldorf for an undisclosed sum for its UniImmo Deutschland open-ended real estate fund.

In addition, Union Investment is mulling the launch of a new institutional spezialfond next year, Kutscher told PropertyEU, although he said it was too early to provide further details. The fund manager is also considering launching other vehicles over the next couple of years that could break away from the spezialfond structure, he added.

Union Investment also wants to grow its institutional business. It currently has EUR 2.8 bn invested on behalf of institutional investors, out of a total of EUR 40 bn of assets under management. ‘We want to grow this figure,’ Kutscher said, adding that institutional investment could conceivably account for 25% of its portfolio by the end 2016.

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