GreenOak’s Spain-focused Fund has acquired 320,000 square meters of real estate assets in multiple transactions, primarily in Greater Madrid, and has €700 million of investment capacity for Spain.
GreenOak’s Continental European Private Equity Real Estate Fund, dedicated primarily to Spain (the “Fund”), had its final closing in July, only eight months after its first close, with commitments hitting the fund’s “hard cap” of €250 million early, and doubling its target equity raise of €100-€150 million. The Fund is denominated in Euros and is fully discretionary.
With Fund portfolio leverage targeted to be at 65%, GreenOak can acquire or develop real estate with a cost of over €700 million. In addition, GreenOak has retained flexibility to bring in co-investors to invest alongside the Fund in select assets, further increasing GreenOak’s overall investment capacity.
The GreenOak managed Fund primarily targets logistics, office, retail, and residential; mainly in Madrid, Barcelona, and other large Spanish cities. In addition to acquiring existing assets, the Fund can also invest in land with planning for development. GreenOak expects to use its first European Fund to acquire assets in Italy.
The Fund comprises institutional investors from North America, Europe and Asia. The investors include large corporate and government pension funds, foundations, large family offices, and fund managers.
To date, the Fund has acquired or has committed to acquire approximately €325 million of assets including:
Nine large, modern, logistics assets totaling 200,000 square meters of occupied space, built on over 410,000 square meters of land, the majority of which is in prime Madrid logistics corridors
A 16,000 square meter shopping center in greater Seville
Five class A office buildings in established Madrid markets totalling 27,500 square meters
A well located, central Madrid approximately 7,500 square meter High Street Retail-led building
A modern recently built Barcelona office building of approximately 10,000 square meters
60,000 square meters of land for logistics development in a prime Madrid logistics corridor
Investments outside of Madrid and Barcelona are expected to include strong economic metropolitan areas of Bilbao, Valencia and Zaragoza for logistics (in addition to Seville retail)
John Carrafiell, Europe-based co-founder of GreenOak, said:
“In our opinion, Spain, along with Italy, continues to be amongst the best distressed, deep value real estate opportunities in Europe, if not the world, combining deep value from forced sellers -- with strong economic growth and recovery”.
“What differentiates us is simple: we are laser focused only on Spain and Italy for this Fund. That dedication of resources and their singular focus, results in performance when the situation requires a buyer who can deliver. That is why we often secure assets off-market, working exclusively, one-on-one with a seller.”
“We focus on well located, quality buildings in need of recapitalization and hands-on repositioning management. We close deals as small as €8-25 million, which isn’t the target of most funds or the listed Socimis. With a team of experienced property and assets managers in our dedicated GreenOak Spain platform, we implement asset strategies ourselves, while equally working with ‘best-in-class’ partners.”
Background on GreenOak in Europe and Spain
In Europe from 2012-2014, prior to the formation of the Fund, GreenOak had raised committed equity capital totaling $350 million from institutional investors which GreenOak deployed in separate strategies in the UK and Spain including Core Plus, Value Add and Opportunistic investments.
Specifically, in February 2014, GreenOak, with partners, acquired a portfolio of shopping centers with 133,000 square meters of leasable space from Vastned for €160 million; see link:
http://greenoakrealestate.com/2014/02/greenoak-acquires-shopping-centers-in-spain/
Also see link to initial GreenOak announcement regarding the formation of its logistics platform:
Source: Business Wire