LaSalle IM, Aviva bag Spanish mall for €70m

LaSalle Investment Management and Aviva Investors have purchased El Tormes shopping center on behalf of the pair’s Encore+ real estate platform, which now has assets under management of more than €1.2 billion. 

LaSalle Investment Management (LaSalle IM), the Chicago-based real estate investment manager, has acquired a shopping mall in Salamanca, Spain, using capital from its core plus vehicle which it co-manages with Aviva Investors.

The El Tormes shopping center, which has a total area of 228,000 square feet, offers a mix of retail with over half the units occupied by fashion retailers, while other key tenants include restaurants, supermarkets and specialist retailers. It benefits from a strong location, situated at a busy road junction that connects the center with the main motorway and most affluent residential neighborhood of the city.

The asset, which opened in 2000, was acquired from CBRE Global Investors’ Retail Property Fund Iberica.

Encore+ is a pan-European open-ended core plus fund, with LaSalle Investment Management acting as asset and transaction manager and Aviva Investors acting as fund manager. The vehicle broke through the €1 billion mark in late 2016 and now has total assets of more than €1.2 billion under management. The three-year return for the fund is more than 9.3 percent, as of February 28, 2017.

“In addition to Spanish retail being a core target for us, this new acquisition also fits well with our strategy of targeting dominant shopping centers in strong and sustainable locations across Europe,” said Jeffrey King, fund manager for Encore+ at Aviva Investors. “This asset is poised to benefit from the continued recovery in Spain, while also offering the potential for specific asset management initiatives to improve the center’s performance,” he added.

“We see this as an opportunity to generate value by repositioning the asset within the Core+ spectrum and maximizing its strong fundamentals,” said Ian Williamson, investment manager for Encore+ at LaSalle IM. “Furthermore, the asset is located in a DTU defensive town and should add long term stability to the Fund’s income steam,” he added.

In December, LaSalle IM and Aviva Investors acquired the 69 Haussmann building in Paris for €128 million on behalf of Encore+. The asset, which is part of a wider complex called Haussmann Paris, comprises more than 72,000 square feet of office space, across eight floors, and is home to high-profile businesses such as Rabobank and UBS.