Korean fund buys Allianz Berlin HQ from Corpus Sireo in €300m+ deal
In another sizeable deal on Berlin's commercial property market, global real estate investment firm Hines has bought the Allianz Campus Berlin on behalf of a Korean real estate fund managed by Vestas Investment Management.
The seller was Corpus Sireo Real Estate, and although no price was confirmed, informed sources put the deal at about €320m, a figure mentioned in the business press earlier this year when the Koreans were first mentioned as frontrunners to buy the asset. The deal is a share-based forward funding transaction, with the huge office project scheduled to be delivered at the end of 2018. Berlin Hyp provided the debt financing.
Corpus Sireo and joint venture partner FOM Real Estate maintain responsibility for delivering the construction project, while Hines will take over the long-term asset management.
Allianz Campus Berlin comprises three buildings with around 60,000 sqm of rentable office space and 689 parking spaces, and is located close to the Adlershof S-Bahn station at the thriving Adlershof Technology Park in the southern part of the city.
Allianz Deutschland will establish its new Berlin headquarters in the property and be its main tenant, and has signed a lease till 2034, moving from its current office in Berlin’s Treptowers complex. Tenants will move into the building in the first quarter of 2019.
According to Kai-Magnus Schulte, director of Hines Germany, “Allianz Campus Berlin will be the most modern and sustainable building in the best location of (science and media district) Berlin Adlershof. For our investor, the acquisition of Allianz Campus Berlin represents a strategic decision.” The project is targeting a DGNB Platinum certification from the German Sustainable Building Council.
Corpus Sireo, the German subsidiary of Swiss Life Asset Management, has separately been mandated by a group of German occupation pension funds to build up a portfolio of up to €300m in German residential, both new and existing buildings, and geographically diverse, with the focus on regional centres and selected A-locations.
The mandate also includes asset and property management in addition to the acquisitions. The structure will be a vehicle under Luxemburg jurisdiction administered by Institutional Investment Partners. Acquisitions will focus on regional centers and selected A-locations.
Meanwhile, in commercial property, Corpus Sireo has sold off the so-called SPIRIT Portfolio, part of the 26-asset STELLA Portfolio which parent company Swiss Life bought from DEKA Immobilien in December 2015 for €370m in what was one of the largest deals at the time. The buyer is an as yet unnamed international investor.
The SPIRIT portfolio consists of 12 commercial properties with 105,000 sqm of rentable space, mainly office space but including a hotel. When they were bought from DEKA in 2015, they were largely Core-plus and Value-add properties. Nearly half of the square metrage has since been extended or newly-contracted over the sixteen months since then.
Benjamin Koch, managing director responsible for SPIRIT at Corpus Sireo Real Estate, said: “In our 16-month holding period, we worked extremely hard on the properties and we are delighted at how much we have managed to do in this time. Our operational team is now working on behalf of the new owner with the same high level of motivation."