Two US investment firms are buying Nova Eventis, one of the largest regional shopping centres in Germany, for more than €200 mln, PropertyEU/EuroProperty can reveal.
A local German newspaper, Leipziger Volkszeitung, broke the news of the deal, reporting that Prejan Enterprises had agreed at Easter to sell the asset to an unidentified buyer for €200 mln.
Research by EuroProperty, part of the PropertyEU group, indicates that the buyer is a joint venture between Los-Angeles based Ares Management and The Baupost Group, an opportunistic-focused investment manager based in Boston.
Nova Eventis is located in the village of Günthersdorf, about 16 kilometres from Leipzig in eastern Germany. Comprising 210 stores and 700 parking places on 94,470 m2, the Leipzig mall is the largest shopping centre in the region and ranks among the largest in Germany. It is managed by Hamburg-based ECE Projektmanagement.
An ECE spokesman told German media that a sale of the Leipzig mall, which is subject to regulatory approval, would likely complete in May. ECE will remain as centre manager after the asset changes hands. The price is believed to be in excess of €200 mln. Nova Eventis was last valued at almost €219 mln.
South Africa
Prejan had acquired Nova Eventis and the Allee Center in Leipzig's Grünau district in 2006 for a total of €390 mln, according to German media. Prejan Enterprises is a holding company used by Stenprop, a South African real estate fund that invests in European real estate.
Stenprop owns a 28.42% share in a fund called Stenham European Shopping Centre Fund (SESCF), which in turn owns Nova Eventis. Having decided to sell the shopping centre in 2016, the directors of the fund reduced the value of Nova Eventis by 17.4% from €265 mln to €218.8 mln based on the sale negotiations.
Stenprop, according to its website, owns €900 mln of office, retail, logistics, and healthcare real estate in the UK, Germany and Switzerland. The German assets listed are Nova Eventis and Bleichenhof, a 20,000 m2 mixed-use property in Hamburg.
Allee Center has also been sold recently. Hamburg-based ECE Projektmanagement remains manager of that centre as well.
Opened in September 2006, Nova Eventis is situated close to Leipzig Airport, in the Leipzig/Halle region of East Germany. The shopping centre is next to, and has shared parking with an Ikea superstore. Drawing from a catchment area of 2.7 million inhabitants, Nova Eventis has an average footfall of 16,000 people each weekday and 35,000 per day on the weekends.
Ares Management was active in Germany at the beginning of March 2017 when it acquired a portfolio of 1,300 homes in the north of the country.
