EUROPE - Schroder Property and Viveris Real Estate Investment Management have teamed up to create the first pan-European real estate funds structured as an organisme de placement collectif immobilier (OPCI).
A number of OPCIs have already been launched in France, offering French institutional investors a locally regulated, tax-efficient structure for real estate investments, but this has so far been confined to the French property market.
Last year, Schroders identified the growing appeal of locally regulated fund structures in Europe, especially among French, German and Italian institutional investors.
For this reason, the UK-based asset manager has teamed up with French OPCI specialist Viveris to launch a series of European real estate funds aimed at a French institutional audience.
Founded by Frédéric Bôl, Viveris was among the first OPCI management companies to achieve AMF certification in 2007 and manages real estate investments across France for institutional investors.
Schroders, meanwhile, has a pan-European presence with more than 90 people based in nine offices across the continent and more than €10bn in assets under management.
The partnership will offer French institutional investors the opportunity to invest in other European real estate markets at a time when many institutions are still heavily weighted to their domestic market.
Neil Turner, global head of fund management at Schroder Property Investment Management, said: "This is another exciting development for our property business in Europe. The combination of the OPCI and French expertise that Viveris REIM bring and the wider pan-European platform that Schroders has will be a great benefit to our clients."
