PERE Forum: Europe review in pictures

As limited and general partners look to the real estate future many are wondering exactly what investment structure will work best? The traditional commingled fund model, club deals, separate accounts or direct investing?

At the PERE Forum: Europe 2010 conference in London last month, more than 300 delegates were asking just such questions as they heard from a host of veteran property investors from all over the world.

As a keynote speaker, Bruce Flatt, senior managing partner and chief executive officer of Brookfield Asset Management, said his firm's $5.5 billion club fund, the Brookfield Real Estate Turnaround Consortium, was simply a product of last year’s dire fundraising environment – designed to capitalise on particular current deals, including in bankrupt US REIT General Growth Properties.

With the fundraising market in 2008 making it “impossible to raise a large fund to deploy into opportunities like GGP”, Flatt said Brookfield was likely to return to more traditional methods of fundraising in the future.

Reviewing the PERE Forum in pictures, below, delegates also added their weight to the debate as to whether LPs should be targeting commingled funds or other investment vehicles.

In a break from traditional panels, PERE staged its popular “Big Debate” – which pits two teams of real estate professionals against one another in a traditional school-style debate – with Volker Wiederrich, chief investment officer of the advisory firm Swisslake, and Keith Breslauer, managing director of Patron Capital, arguing in support of LP fund investments, while Claus Stenbaek, managing director of Keyhaven Capital Partners, and Jos Short, co-founder of Internos Real Estate, opposed LP fund investments.

To see what happened during the PERE Forum: Europe 2010, click play below. Click here for more information on the next PERE Forums, to be held in New York on 26 and 27 October and in Frankfurt on 6 and 7 December.

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