Atrium appoints COO

Nils-Christian Haker is appointed chief operating officer of Atrium European Real Estate as its new investors, Citi Property Investors and Gazit-Globe, continue to restructure the Central and Eastern Europe shopping center company.

Atrium European Real Estate, the owner, operator and developer of shopping centres in Central and Eastern Europe, has appointed Nils-Christian Hakert as chief operating officer.

Hakert, 42, joins from Unibail-Rodamco, a pan-European commercial property investor, where he has worked since 2005 as retail director of Central Europe.

The appointment is the latest since Citi Property Investors and Israel-based Gazit-Globe announced plans earlier this year to inject €800 million ($1.2 billion) into the Vienna-listed company, formerly known as Meinl European Land.

Rachel Lavine, the new chief executive officer installed by the investors, said in a statement: “Since I officially took up my role as chief executive officer of Atrium I have maintained that one of my key priorities was to appoint a strong executive management team, which has a great deal of experience in European real estate development and investment and shopping centres, in particular.”

She added the company was at an advanced stage of negotiations with a number of candidates for the other positions, including, chief financial officer, chief development officer and chief technology officer.

Citi Property Investors, which is run out of New York by Roger Orf, and its partner in the deal, Gazit-Globe, finalized their investment in Meinl in August and announced the change of name to Atrium European Real Estate.

Atrium has more than 160 properties across the Central and Eastern European region, with 34 properties under development and redevelopment. It also owns a land bank of 11 parcels of land with more than 1.9 million square meters of developable land.