Accession Fund earmarks 250m euros for real estate

Accession Fund investment fund, whose capitalisation reaches about one billion euros, plans to invest up to 250 million euros in the Romanian real estate market, deemed as one of the most attractive in the entire region.
“Accession Fund has earmarked 250 million euros for projects in Romania and Bulgaria, but, considering opportunities, we are likely to invest the entire sum in Romania. We are focusing on retail projects, logistics parks and office buildings, and Romania is an attractive market”, George Leslie, manager for Romania of GLL Real Estate Partners GmbH, the company managing Accession Fund, told Ziarul Financiar.
The Italian giant of the European insurance industry Assicurazioni Generali (also operating in Romania through Generali Asigurari), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and German pension funds are among the institutional investors in Accession Fund.
“We are active on the Romanian market, we already have projects ”in the pipeline”, and the first deals will emerge in the near future”, said Leslie. The fund is eyeing Bucharest”s real estate market, added the official of GLL Real Estate Partners GmbH.
The company, with offices in Munich and in the United States, manages real estate investment funds for institutional investors, already managing properties worth about one billion euros.
GLL Real Estate Partners is seeking to double its property portfolio over the next two years. Accession Fund investment fund was raised precisely with the rising real estate markets of Central and Eastern Europe, including Romania, in mind.
The major transactions of the company also include the acquisition in 2002 of MesseTurm tower of Frankfurt, the tallest office building in Europe, with a height of 257 metres. GLL Real Estate Partners manages office buildings in several European and US cities, including Paris, Madrid, Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
The Romanian real estate market has lured some major European and US institutional investors, with the raising of several real estate investment funds having been announced since the beginning of the year.
On the other hand, the last two years have seen several transactions on Bucharest”s market, with Austrian Europolis, Immofinnanz or CA Immo, as well as Israel-based Kardan or Africa Israel Investments being the most involved.
Major projects, highly sought by important investors, are almost lacking.
One of the advantages of the Romanian real estate market is the yield of investments, put at around 10%, several percentage points above the threshold registered on other markets in the region, such as Poland, the Czech Republic or Hungary. adrian.mirsanu@zf.ro