M7 makes opening €213m acquisitions for fourth fund

The London-based real estate investment manager has acquired three portfolios of mixed assets, spread across Finland, Germany and the Netherlands, for a total of €213m. 

M7 Real Estate, the pan-European real estate investment manager, has completed the first acquisitions on behalf of its fourth Europe-focused investment vehicle for a total of €213 million.

The firm held a first close for the vehicle, M7 European Real Estate Investment Partners (M7 EREIP) IV, in September having received capital commitments totaling more than €175 million.

The purchases comprise three portfolios of mixed assets spread across Finland, Germany and the Netherlands.

The Finnish portfolio has been acquired from a fund managed by Helsinki-based investment manager OP Property Management and includes three retail, two office and seven industrial assets totalling 630,000 square feet. The Dutch portfolio comprises six urban logistics centers located across the Randstad, which when combined total more than 220,000 square feet (not meters?) of floor space. The seller on the Dutch portfolio was not disclosed. The individuals prices of the portfolios were not by M7 but the combined price of the Dutch and Finnish portfolios was €62 million.

In addition to completing on these two portfolios, M7 has also acquired a further 35 office, logistics and retail assets across Finland, Germany and the Netherlands, for around €151 million, bringing EREIP IV’s total investments to approximately €213 million. The seller was not disclosed on this deal either.

Richard Croft, M7’s chief executive, said “We held the first close of EREIP IV at the end of September and, having achieved a total investment capacity of over €400 million, these acquisitions are a strong endorsement of M7’s continued ability to raise capital and utilise our pan-European platform to quickly deploy funds into attractive, income-producing investments across multiple sectors and geographies, where we see an opportunity to add value through asset management.

“Having put our first tranche of investor capital to work, we expect to have senior debt in place shortly to enable a second phase of acquisitions and will then be following this up with a further equity close later in Q4 2016,” he added.

The acquisitions come just days after M7 launched its debut Central European real estate fund, for which it will target capital commitments of €130 million. The firm said the investment vehicle, M7 Central European Real Estate Fund (CEREF) I, will be used for both core-plus and high-yielding regional opportunities across major cities in the Czech Republic, Croatia and Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. More than €35 million has already been raised on behalf of the fund, largely coming from a number of family office and high net worth individuals. As a result, the business has also announced its first acquisition through the fund, a 145,000 square foot office building, Oregon House, in Prague. The property is already 70 percent let to a string of tenants, including Schindler CZ, Proceram and IKEA, which produce an annual rent of €1.5 million.

Speaking at the time, Croft said: “As our first fund focussed entirely on Central Europe, M7 CEREF I is an important milestone in the continued expansion of the M7 business.”