IC Immobilien raising German profile for asset, property management
German fund and asset manager IC Immobilien has taken over the property management division of real estate advisor Colliers in Germany in a share deal, as part of its repositioning in the market. The deal came into effect at the beginning of the year. Colliers staff number and locations including Munich and Düsseldorf are expected to remain unchanged, although the Colliers branding will be subsumed into IC Immobilien.
The Colliers deal will immediately bring clients such as Art-Invest, AEW Europe and UniCredit into the IC Immobilien fold. Achim Degen, the managing partner of Colliers in Munich and head of the German Colliers group commented on the sale: “Our existing network of offices meant that we were not really in a position to offer a seamless service across the whole of Germany. With the IC Immobilien Group we have found not only the perfect partner, but a partner we can trust to take over our property management business.”
REFIRE met recently with new IC Immobilien boss Markus Reinert, whom we've known going back a number of years. He's clearly intent on expanding the group's competence in asset and property management, including gaining new large mandates from international investors.
IC Immobilien will remain rooted in its core competencies of property and asset management, he says, but, "Over the next three to five years we want to double our turnover in our core business of full-service property and asset management, which makes up half of our overall business", (beside fund management). The company operates from seven locations across Germany with 250 staff, and manages more than 800 properties valued at more than €10bn.
The company is clearly aiming to position itself as a partner for the biggest institutional investors in Germany, international or domestic, and Reinert says he sees growth coming from 70%-80% existing clients, with the rest from new mandates and bolt-on acquisitions such as the Colliers Property Management deal. Competent accounting know-how is increasingly demanded by the biggest investors, and Reinert cites this as a major in-house strength, with some 40 people in Berlin in the group's IT and accounting division.