Aberdeen launches property fund for France and Southern Europe

Aberdeen launches property fund for France and Southern Europe

Fri, 27 Apr 2007

In line with its strategy to become a leading fund and asset manager in the French market, Aberdeen Property Investors has launched a new fund, Aberdeen Property Fund France and Southern Europe. The fund's first investment is the acquisition of CB 16, a landmark office building in la Défense in Paris, from GE Real Estate France for an amount in excess of EUR 200 million.

The building is fully let to Alcan and Unilog on a 9-year lease agreement. The total area of the building is some 28,000m2, containing also three company restaurants and 151 parking spaces. L'Etoile Properties acted as advisor to Aberdeen in this acquisition.

Jacques-Yves Nicol, International Director and Head of Aberdeen Property Investors Southern Europe, said: 'We are very pleased to have this quality building as our first acquisition for the new fund. This is a landmark property in a prime business district, which is enjoying good rental growth and a low vacancy rate of 5%.'

'This acquisition reflects the success of our strategic partnership with L'Etoile Properties in the French market, which not only allows us to offer active local management of the fund's assets but also provides valuable support in the sourcing of products.'

Aberdeen Property Fund France and Southern Europe is a closed-ended, diversified fund with a Core to Value added profile. It will be diversified both in terms of sectors and geography, covering France, Spain, Portugal and Italy, with France being the priority market initially. The target equity is EUR 500 million, which given its target level of leverage of 50-60% loan to value, will give an investment capacity of EUR 1-1.3 billion.

Ubbe Strihagen, International Director at Aberdeen Property Investors, added: 'Through the new Aberdeen France and Southern European Fund, we offer a new product to complement our existing product range for institutional investors. We now have 11 funds open for investments in Europe and Asia, ranging from national and regional funds to fund of fund products. This is however our first product that focuses purely on Southern Europe.'

Aberdeen Property Investors is the specialist division of Aberdeen Asset Management plc, a global investment management group listed on the London Stock Exchange and managing over EUR 100 billion of assets.

Aberdeen Property Investors manages some EUR 10 billion in property investments through property funds and management mandates on behalf of its institutional client base. The division has some 500 employees at offices in ten European countries.