Activum buys second German senior housing developer

European turnaround specialist ActivumSG Capital Management has bought WirtschaftsHaus, a major German developer of senior housing, to lead the sector in Germany with a €1.2bn pipeline of properties. No price details of the deal were given.

The deal comes two years after the purchase of the WI-Immo Group, another senior housing developer, by another ASG fund. Together, the companies develop around 1,500 units a year of retirement homes or assisted living facilities. The two companies, WI-Immo Group and Wirtschaftshaus, will now be merged into a new entity with a new top management team.

'Germany needs to accommodate 300,000 more of its senior citizens by 2030 and we identified this as a huge opportunity for establishing a specialist developer of scale,' said managing partner Saul Goldstein, who founded ActivumSG in 2007 after leaving private equity investor Cerberus, where he held a number of senior roles.

'Purchasing the project development activities of WirtschaftsHaus is another major step forward in this strategy and highlights how we have been favouring the unconventional corporate route to invest in attractive real estate themes in Germany on behalf of our investors,' Goldstein added.

The acquisition of the project development activities of WirtschaftsHaus is the 17th investment by ASG’s fund V, which has committed about 85% of the €489m it raised from investors by its final close in December 2017.

According to ASG, the fund’s investments are split between Germany and Spain, where it has invested directly into real estate – mainly in condominium projects in high-demand locations that are managed by ASG’s Spanish residential development platform, ASG Homes.

'Our local teams are seeing a significant number of highly attractive investment opportunities in Germany and Spain, which is why they have had no difficulty in deploying Fund V’s capital so quickly,' added Goldstein. 'They are well-placed to source deals and transact swiftly, managing assets to maximise their operational performance to deliver healthy returns for our funds’ investors.'

Meanwhile, Activum said it had hired Karl Reinitzhuber, the former head of Germany for Unibail-Rodamco, as co-CEO and CFO of its new care property subsidiary. He will work alongside Edwin Thiemann, also co-CEO and former head of developer Wirtschaftshaus, to handle the strategic and operative management of the new group. The management team also includes Ralf Licht as head of development and Sandro Pawils as head of sales.