Corestate fund transferred to Tristan

Corestate Capital, the Zug-based private equity real estate firm that is now orientated towards club deals, has relinquished management of its German Commercial Properties Fund to London-based Tristan Capital Partners.

The transfer of control was agreed last week following a decision by Corestate earlier this year not to seek to extend the fund beyond a maturity date in July.

Corestate launched its German Commercial Properties Fund in 2007 and, although the firm never reported the final equity amount, it has approximately €280 million of gross assets under management. The parties to the deal have signed a confidentiality agreement about the transfer and declined to comment, but limited partners including CBRE Global Investors, Partners Group and Finnish financial services group Pohjola, are understood to have agreed to the transfer.

Key men on the fund – chief operating officer Thomas Landschreiber and Ralph Winter, who is the founder and majority owner of Corestate – have stepped aside to concentrate on the new focus of the firm’s business, in particular club deals. So far, the company has struck around €1.3 billion in transactions with various financial partners.

Corestate Capital had managed two closed-ended funds: Corestate German Residential launched in 2006, which invests in small to medium-sized residential portfolios and remains with Corestate, and the Corestate German Commercial Properties Fund, which is being transferred.

Tristan is the London-based private real estate firm that used to be called Curzon Capital Partners and was started by Ric Lewis. It currently is listing Ralf Nöcker on its website as a managing director. Nöcker joined Corestate Capital in 2009 and had involvement in the commercial property fund.

This transfer is a separate development to a corporate announcement made by Corestate on August 5, when it announced a corporate deal to sell a minority stake to a Swiss listed company. The firm, which was founded in 2006 and has invested in more than €2 billion of deals to date, agreed to sell that stake to Intershop Holding, which has a portfolio of CHF 1 billion (€800 million; $1 billion) in markets such as Zurich, Berne and Geneva.

At the time of the announcement, Corestate revealed that Intershop had agreed to a €20 million capital increase as well as the purchase of the existing shares and participation certificates. “The expansion of our equity base is a sign for the consistent implementation of our growth strategy,” Winter said. “Looking forward, the Corestate Group will in addition to its opportunistic approach also focus on core investments and those generating value-add returns. In Intershop Holding, we have now gained an institutional partner who wishes to join us in realizing opportunities of the German real estate market.”

Several months ago, Corestate announced it had hired Steffen Ricken from IVG Institutional Funds to become managing director and head of global capital raising. His responsibilities include raising capital for joint ventures and club deals, as well as other institutional products. The firm has been looking to extend its investor network of late and, in April, it opened its first office in Asia – in Singapore – with a view to increasing the amount of Asian capital it has to deploy in its European markets.