Orion to buy €600m Odin portfolio from liquidating Credit Suisse
London-based private equity firms Orion Capital Partners is in advanced negotiations to buy the huge Odin office portfolio from funds managed by Credit Suisse Asset Management (CSAM), according to a report last week by German trade magazine Immobilien Zeitung. The portfolio consists of 20 separate office properties throughout Germany, and is valued at €600m.
Credit Suisse has been engaged in winding up its €3.2bn CS Euroreal open-ended fund and a number of the assets are said to be coming from that fund, along with the smaller CS Property Dynamic. Last summer Brookfield Financial put the portfolio on the market, and if the rumours are correct, the two parties have already reached signature stage, although neither have yet confirmed the deal.
Among the assets in the transaction is the German headquarters of electronics group Philips in Hamburg, although the big project development T8 on Frankfurt’s Taunusanlage in the business district is excluded, say reports. Credit Suisse’s CS Euroreal open-ended fund largely held assets in Berlin, Frankfurt and Hamburg, and the bank has until April 30 2017 to complete the liquidation of the fund.
The move represents a shift in strategy for Orion, which has largely been focusing on the European retail sector of late. Orion Partner Van J. Stults commented several times last year about how London was looking very expensive to his group right now, and Orion was more likely to be shifting its focus to opportunities in Europe this year.
After selling three shopping centres from its opportunistic Fund III, Orion has been busy buying retail assets for its €1.3bn successor fund. Orion launched Fund IV in December 2014, raising €1.3bn of equity commitments. Just recently it bought the prominent Lilien Carré shopping centre in Wiesbaden for around €100m out of insolvency; a portfolio of three shopping centres in northeast Italy from Unicomm for a price thought to be around €200m and the joint purchase with Cerberus of a Spanish tourist resort in Cadiz from NH Hotels Group for €225m.
Most of the big broker groups in Germany are forecasting a renaissance in big office portfolio deals in Germany this year after the last few years have largely seen the dominance of retail portfolios for large investors. CBRE is expecting portfolio transaction volume for commercial property to top €20bn in Germany this year, including the likely disposal of the SEB Immoinvest open-ended fund’s Potsdamer Platz ensemble in Berlin, estimated at €1.5bn.
Orion Capital Managers is a London-headquartered private equity real estate investment firm with a European focus on value-add and opportunistic transactions. It is wholly owned by its founding partners Aref Lahham, Van Stults and Bruce Bossom, and has offices in London, Madrid, Milan and Paris.