The Frankfurt-listed DIC Asset announced at the beginning of December that it had raised more than €800m in equity commitments for a new special fund which will be the largest in the company’s history.
The AIF will be launched through its subsidiary GEG for a club of domestic institutional investors, and has a medium-term target of €1.6bn. The focus of the fund is core office properties occupied by blue-chip tenants with long-term leases.
As investment manager of the fund, GEG will generate both transaction fees and earnings from the ongoing asset management and property management. Christian Bock, the Chief Institutional Business Officer of DIC Asset, said “We were able to win the trust of many new investment partners for this fund. For the fund launch, DIC Asset has put together an attractive seed portfolio of four assets with a combined value of €780 million. We will use the already fully-subscribed equity capital to move ahead with additional promising investments.”Those seed assets, all located in the Rhine-Main region, include the Deka Office Hub in Frankfurt’s Niederrad district which was bought from Lang & Cie, and the Wilhelminenhaus in Darmstadt (from DIC’s own holdings), both of which are fully occupied with a weighted average lease term (WALT) of more than 18 years.
DIC Asset has a strong national presence with six branch offices, and has 189 assets with a combined market value (Sept. 30th) of €8.7bn. About €6.6 billion of that is allocated to its Institutional Business division, which operates under the name GEG German Estate Group. The company has been listed in the SDAX since June 2006.
