Primonial rebrands European platform and targets place among top ten

French asset management group Primonial Group, still relatively unknown in Germany, is bundling all its European country groupings together under one common umbrella. Its four separate operations in France, Germany, Luxembourg and Italy will in future be run as one company, Primonial REIM. The company said its goal is to be among the top ten European real estate managers.

The pan-European platform Primonial REIM is intended to increase the visibility of the real estate division, where it already manages €30bn for private and institutional investors. About a half of the AUM are offices, and a third are healthcare or educational assets, followed by 10% retail, 6% residential and 2% hotels.

The group started its real estate business in 2011 with the investment company Primonial REIM, founded in France. In 2017, the group then acquired the German fund and social investment company AviaRent, followed by other European markets in 2018 with the foundation of Primonial Luxembourg and in 2020 with Primonial Italy. The company manages €5.5bn in Germany, about €3bn of which is AviaRent while the rest is managed by the French company directly.

The German business will now be built up around the AviaRent business, and well-known top manager Peter Finkbeiner has just joined the company as head of the German business from Isaria Wohnbau, where he was CEO. Before that he held the CFO position at listed TLG Immobilien after several years at Lone Star.

Jürgen Fenk, who joined Primonial in March from René Benko's Signa Group, is the new group CEO working alongside chairman Laurent Fléchet and Stéphanie Lacroix as COO. The goal is to boost total AUM from €30bn to €40bn over the next three years.

A renewed focus will be put on residential development and new asset classes such as hotels, to gain diversification to offices as the ongoing heaviest weighting.

Primonial REIM employs more than 400 staff across its four main markets, managing the 61 funds in its platform for 80,000 individual mandates, of which 54% are private investors and 46% institutionals.