Warburg-Henderson raise €400m for TOP 5 German office fund
German fund manager Warburg-Henderson, the joint venture of UK fund giant Henderson Global Investors and Hamburg private bank Warburg, has closed a Special Fund investing in Germany’s top five locations at €400m investment volume.
Only 18 months after its launch, the Deutschland TOP 5 fund reached full investment, despite expansion after strong demand from existing investors, the manager said. The portfolio of core and core-plus assets now consists of six offices, located in Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt and Munich. Due to good initial fund performance and the speed of investments, existing investors added another €22m in equity to the €208m originally underwritten, to cover a further asset, the office property Valentinshof in Hamburg.
“Given the intense competition for high-quality office assets in Germany’s investment centres, we are proud to have reached full investment in the fund after 18 months,” said senior fund manager Daniel Fahrer. HIH Hamburgische Immobilien Handlung acts as asset manager. Warburg-Henderson is planning several new property vehicles, with the investment focus on Germany and Europe as well as the US, in line with the global plans of shareholder TIAA Henderson, said the fund manager’s head of business development Nikolas Jorzick.
Separately, the UK-based TIAA Henderson Real Estate (TH Real Estate) said that it had secured a new €54.7m debt financing on behalf of its European Outlet Mall Fund. The new five year facility replaces the previous €39.2m financing, which was due to mature in December 2014. The debt has been secured against phases one and two of Designer Outlet Parndorf.
The loan, provided by pbb Deutsche Pfandbriefbank, gives the Fund the firepower to undertake asset management at the property and work towards the development of a new phase at the scheme, which is expected to open in 2016. The deal is competitively priced, said TH Real Estate, reflecting a conservative loan-to-value on this prime Austrian retail asset. The refinancing comes shortly after the successful ten year “extension” of the approximately €1.5bn flagship European Outlet Mall Fund, which owns eight outlet mall assets across Europe, in addition to its indirect holding in three UK outlet mall assets.
Designer Outlet Parndorf is located 30 minutes from Vienna centre, and 25 minutes from Bratislava, the Slovakian capital. The centre hosts designer stores including Armani, Gucci, Polo Ralph Lauren and Michael Kors.
Since its big merger last year, TH Real Estate, jointly owned by US-based TIAA-CREF (60%) and the UK’s Henderson Global Investors (40%), is one of the largest real estate managers in the world, focusing on retail, office, logistics, debt and multi-family assets. It manages $24bn of real estate and debt across 50 funds and mandates.