EUROPE - Bärbel Schomberg has been appointed to advise Cityhold Property - the real estate joint venture of Swedish buffer funds AP1 and AP2 - on the German market.
The two buffer funds unveiled their property joint venture in June last year.
The venture has a total asset target of €1.1bn, which is to be invested predominantly in the office sector in France, Germany and the UK.
Schomberg is co-founder and managing partner at independent real estate consultant Schomberg & Co and was formerly with Aberdeen, Allianz and SEB, among others.
In February 2011, she was appointed to the sustainability board at German real estate developer ECE as an advisory member.
Other members appointed to the Cityhold advisory board include Charles Frederick Clark, who specialises in the UK market, and Alec Emmott for the French market.
Clark is employed by BNP Paribas Real Estate, while Emmott is an independent director at CeGeReal.
All three each have more than 30 years' experience in their respective markets.
Earlier in January, Cityhold named Lisa Flodin as CFO.
Last week, the real estate joint venture made its first purchase in London, where it acquired the freehold office building at 1 Kingdom Street, Paddington, London, with a net lettable area of 260,569 square feet.
At a purchase price of £230m (€278m), the net initial yield is just below 6%.
Cityhold said AP1 and AP2 would provide initial funding for the acquisition, which will be "partly replaced" by third-party finance in early 2012.
Advised by Lang La Salle, Cityhold bought the building from a joint venture between Aviva Investors and Union Investment Real Estate, with high-profile tenants such as Vodafone, Statoil and Misys.
Per Sjöberg, chief executive at Cityhold, said: "It is a new high-quality property, which provides an excellent long-term stable income stream from blue-chip tenants."
