ActivumSG, the pan-European-focused private equity real estate firm, has appointed a high-profile, senior capital advisory executive to drive its fundraising and investor management activities, PERE can reveal.
The firm has appointed Eric Lemer as head of global client solutions and capital formation, a newly created role with senior responsibilities in investor engagement, fundraising, co-investment and business development. Lemer started in the role last week after leaving Stockholm-based manager EQT Exeter at the end of January.
Reporting to ActivumSG’s founder and chief executive officer Saul Goldstein, Lemer will lead a team of client relations and capital raising professionals, including Nick Temperley, a director who joined earlier this year from rival manager Europa Capital. Lemer replaces Annemarie Manning, previously Activum’s head of investor relations and product development, who left in November.
According to Goldstein, Lemer’s arrival should enable the firm to offer more investment strategies besides those currently featuring prominently in the firm’s focal Activum Fund series. The latest vehicle in the series, Activum Fund VII, was closed in December 2021 on €539 million, with commitments largely from US investors including The University of Texas, according to PERE research.
Most recently, the firm has concentrated its deployment into western European markets via direct real estate, corporate platform investments and special situations strategies, with a focus on residential. Lemer’s arrival should precipitate further types of deployment, including via credit-based strategies.
“There are ways of tackling the market these days besides having opportunistically priced capital,” Goldstein told PERE. “We want to do it in a more programmatic way from a capital solutions and client servicing perspective.”
It is understood Fund VII has more than €250 million of dry powder left after the firm deployed nothing in 2023, and so there are no immediate plans for another fundraising. But Lemer’s appointment is geared to ultimately introducing more vehicles, so that position could change sooner rather than later in the coming market cycle.
When it does, Goldstein expects to be able to offer ActivumSG’s investors more conduits to accessing attractive investment opportunities than before. “We have a flagship opportunity fund coming every couple of years but other parts of the capital structure we have not been able to service in any way.”
He also said he expected Lemer’s hire to lead to greater geographical diversity in its investor base. Currently, the firm’s investors are mainly from the US, although some capital has been raised from Middle East- and Latin America-based groups too.
Among his previous roles, Lemer set up the European office of one of private real estate’s most prominent capital advisory firms, Hodes Weill & Associates, in 2012.
After that, he held a senior internal capital-facing role at London-based manager Delancey, before joining EQT in 2019. At EQT he helped the firm merge with US logistics manager Exeter Property Group in 2021, creating a business now with more than $20 billion of real estate equity under management.
In an announcement to be made shortly, Lemer said: “I will look to continue to grow ActivumSG’s culture of fiduciary excellence and client-first mindset as the team not only takes advantage of the current opportunities, but also remains laser-focused on value creation across our current portfolio and the disposition of assets to return capital to our client partners.”
ActivumSG was founded by ex-Cerberus Capital Management veteran Goldstein in 2007 and has since raised seven funds with aggregate capital exceeding €3 billion. The firm directly employs and indirectly oversees, via affiliates and its funds’ portfolio companies, about 290 people in over 20 offices, responsible for managing assets and development projects valued at approximately €8 billion.
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