Opera Center, one of Bucharest’s biggest business centres, has been sold for almost 30 million dollars, under the largest transaction ever concluded on the domestic real estate market.
The buyer is an Austrian-based investment company, CA Immo. This is the Austrians’ second transaction on the Romanian market, following their involvement in the Charles de Gaulle office building, which will become the head office of mobile telephony company Mobifon-Connex as of next year.#leadend#
“We had been in talks with the Opera Center owners for the past few months and the transaction was finalised at the end of last week. The deal now needs to be okayed by the officials,” Wolfhard Fromwald, a member of the CA Immo Board told Ziarul Financiar. According to Fromwald, the Austrian company has bought both the building and the developer, with all its debts. “The transaction is worth some $29 million,” Fromwald added.
Contacted by Ziarul Financiar, the officials of Portland Trust, the Czech-registered company that invested in building the Opera Center, would not comment upon the deal. Ghenadie Bobeica, the representative of Portland Romania SRL (the company managing the business centre) had said two months ago that he was in talks with several foreign investment funds in order to sell the building. “We are in talks with foreign investors and the building will be sold by yearend,” he said at that point.
As for CA Immo’s plans for the Romanian market, Fromwald says the company aims to look for two – three projects in every country. “We already have two large projects and we are one of the main foreign investors on the Romanian realty market, so we shall focus on these buildings for the time being,” Wolfhard Fromwald said. “After the Charles de Gaulle building is completed, our total investment in Bucharest will reach some 50 million dollars,” he added.
According to Fromwald, CA Immo will hold 50% of the new business centre, developed by Avrig 35,a company with Dutch capital, almost entirely held by the F&C International group. After the Charles de Gaulle project is finalised, it will be managed by a new company, equally held by CA Immo and Dutch group F&C International.
CA Immo is the real estate arm of Austrian group Creditanstalt (which only holds 5% in the company) and operates on the Central and Eastern European markets. At the end of last year, the company managed a portfolio worth 437 million euros, comprising properties that totalled more than 280,000 square metres. CA Immo intends to invest 150 million euros annually to increase the share of its foreign operations from 30% to 50% and to double the value of its portfolio in three years’ time.