NREP opens first Norwegian outpost

The pan-Nordic real estate investment manager has hired former Advent International executive Jens Petter Hagen to lead the Oslo office.

Nordic Real Estate Partners (NREP), the pan-Nordic real estate investment manager, has opened its first office in Norway as the firm looks to expand its investing capabilities.

The Oslo office, which will officially open on September 1, will be led by Jens Petter Hagen, who joins NREP from the private equity firm Advent International. At Advent, Hagen was based in London and responsible for coordinating the firm’s activity in the Nordic region.

Hagen will build a local team of investment professionals covering Norway with the initial support of NREP’s teams in Sweden, Denmark and Finland.

“With the local presence it will be easier for us to extend some of our existing niche strategies into the Norwegian market, which has long been an ambition, and enable us to identify new local investment strategies with potential for superior risk adjusted returns,” said Mikkel Bülow-Lehnsby, chief executive, NREP.

Bülow-Lehnsby said that NREP decided to open a Norwegian outpost as early as January 2014, but waited to find the right set-up and person to lead the new office.

He added that NREP is already working on some Norwegian transactions but the office initially will feed into NREP’s existing strategies before exploring more Norway-specific investment strategies.

“NREP believes that it is paramount to have strong local teams in all the markets we invest in, and the establishment of our office in Oslo is a first step in building up a strong local team and presence in the Norwegian market,” said Rickard Dahlberg, co-chief investment officer at NREP.

Back in May, the firm struck the largest portfolio sale of prime logistics properties in the Nordics and NREP’s largest exit since it was founded ten years ago.

The Denmark-based firm said it had sold for approximately €650 million all the underlying assets in its NREP Logistics Fund and three Swedish properties from NREP’s C1 Fund, delivering “very strong risk-adjusted returns” to investors in the two underlying funds.