Allianz Real Estate has acquired the Porta di Roma shopping centre, Italy’s largest mall, for €440 million, immediately selling a 50 percent stake in the retail asset to Italian investment firm Corio. The centre was purchased from Porta di Roma and Gallerie Commerciali Italia, and will be owned in a 50-50 joint venture.
“This joint venture with Corio in Rome corresponds to our current investment strategy with which we are also developing the retail volume in our portfolio,” said global head of Allianz Real Estate Olivier Piani in a statement. A spokeswoman for Allianz said the firm had acquired the property from its own balance sheet.
Opened in July 2007, Porta di Roma has a total of 97,000-square-metres of space, almost three-quarters of which will be owned by the JV. The shopping centre attracted 16.5 million visitors in 2009, an increase of 23.3 percent compared with 2008, according to the statement. The remainder is owned by French retail group Auchan.
The shopping centre was previously owned by BNP Paribas, according to Real Capital Analytics.
Rome-based Corio has a portfolio of €5.9 billion of properties, 94 percent of which are shopping centres in The Netherlands, France, Italy, Spain and Turkey.
In January 2009, Allianz announced it had been given the right to spend €10 billion over the following five years on real estate opportunities, with up to 30 percent allocated to the US and Asia. With much of the firm’s previous investments focused on Germany, France and Italy, most of new acquisitions, the firm said, would primarily be outside of Europe.
If you do not receive this within five minutes, please try to sign in again. If the problem persists, please email: 
