Peakside prepping up to €1.2bn of investment for new PREF IV fund

Pan-European investment manager Peakside Capital Advisors has completed its fund raising for its Peakside Real Estate Fund IV (PREF IV) earlier than planned, with more than €400m in equity commitments. The initial hard cap of €350m was exceeded by about 20%, a significant oversubscription after less than a full year of fundraising.

PREF IV has more than doubled its equity base compared to its predecessor fund, with funds being committed by existing as well as new clients, mainly institutional investors, sovereign wealth funds and family offices from Europe and the Middle East.

With a target debt ratio of around 6o%, PREF IV will invest in real estate worth over €1.2bn, with the focus being on German properties which are affected by pricing dislocations, “stranded” in sales processes, have additional (re-)financing needs and on assets with value-add or conversion potential. This effectively covers the entire spectrum of asset classes, with the emphasis on opportunistic. Ticket size ranges between €30m and €200m. One acquisition for the fund has already been signed. Closing of the transaction is planned at the beginning of 2022.

According to Peakside managing partner Boris Schran, the deal pipeline is already well filled, with the fund already having several assets under exclusivity. "We are close to the market and occupiers and thus especially looking at investment opportunities in logistics and residential. But we are also seeing several inroads into retail and hotel opportunities we can recommend to the fund, with a particular interest in assets that can be converted into office or residential use. We are confident that the fund will be closing further transactions within the first half of 2022.”

Stefan Aumann, also managing partner, said: “After its first closing in February last year, PREF IV was fully placed with investors within only eleven months – and that despite the COVID-19 pandemic. The speed with which that happened was indeed faster than we anticipated. Interest was enormous.”

Peakside manages assets worth more than €1.4bn, using strategies ranging ranging from core to value-add and opportunistic investments in commercial and residential assets, and has in total acquired assets worth €4.1 billion. The company has a staff of more than 30 in its offices in Frankfurt, Zug, Warsaw, Prague and Luxembourg.