The National Pension Service of Korea has acquired a stake in a Paris shopping centre to add to it European portfolio.
UK public property company Hammerson has sold it a 51 percent share in the O'Parinor shopping centre, Aulnay-Sous-Bois, near Paris, for €223 million, with an option to acquire a further 24 percent in 12 months if requested by either party.
Rockspring Property Investment Managers, which manages a separate account for Korea called the NPS Real Estate Projects Limited Partnership, acquired the asset on behalf of its client. Â
Just last month the Korea pension fund – the fifth largest in the world – said it had increased its target alternative assets allocation to more than 10 percent of its total assets.
According to the NPS, which was established to fund the pensions of its aging population, it plans to have the allocation increase realised in 2014. Its alternative assets allocation – currently $11.63 billion – has grown from 1.1 percent of total assets in 2006, to 2.5 percent in 2007 and 3.8 percent in 2008.
In November last year, it acquired 88 Wood Street in the City of London from ING Real Estate Investment Management for £183 million (€222 million; $285 million) and a 50 percent stake in 40 Grosvenor Place, in London’s West End, from clients of Invista Real Estate Investment Management for approximately £85 million. Both of those deals were sourced through Rockspring.
It also snapped up the European headquarters of HSBC Bank in London’s Canary Wharf for £772 million and Berlin’s landmark Sony Centre from Morgan Stanley.
Hammerson bought the Parinor shopping centre in 2002, and following a major extension and restructuring programme made it into the largest shopping centre to the north of Paris, measuring more than 90,000 square metres.
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