F&C REIT with fresh commitments for German retail

REFIRE bumped into the top brass of Munich-based F&C REIT Asset Management at the MIPIM recently, and we must admit we felt a little sheepish as they listed all the deals they had done last year, which perhaps we hadn’t fully registered. The list is quite impressive, and we duly promised to keep our eyes and ears more open in future for news on the group’s transactions.

The Munich operations are part of the UK property fund and asset management group F&C REIT, which has Stg£6.9bn under management. Last year F&C in Germany did about €330m in deals, with the focus on German Spezialfonds for institutional investors.

By December 2013, the group’s Best Value Germany I (BVG I) fund had been fully invested as scheduled with about €310m, while the year also saw the launch of the successor fund Best Value Germany II (BVG II), with a target volume of €500m. The core-plus fund invests solely in inner-city retail properties between €5m and €50m in German large and mid-size cities.

To date four buildings have already been acquired for BVG II totaling about €45m. The assets are situated in the central retail locations of Bochum, Limburg, Ehingen and Lehrte, Germany, while anchor tenants include C&A, H&M, SinnLeffers und Rossmann. At the same time, nine buildings were sold in the course of the year.

For 2014 the company said it plans to further increase its transaction volume, underpinned by new equity commitments for Spezialfonds and segregated mandates totaling €360m, and to launch new institutional products, including targeting opportunistic and value-add properties.

F&C REIT Germany currently manages lettable space totaling 730,000 sqm, of which 59,000 sqm were let and/or renewed during 2013, the bulk of which were in the retail sector. In total, the company manages 270 German properties valued at about €1.5bn located mainly in mid-sized cities across Germany. The current occupancy rate is about 94%.