UK property fund manager Activum SG is seeing opportunities for attractive deals in Germany, while avoiding the increasingly popular British market, where it expects further price falls to come, its founder said yesterday.
Activum, which plans to spend about 400 million euros (US$574 million) in Europe in the next three years, is mainly focusing its efforts on Germany’s commercial property market, and is eyeing deals that give annual yields of as much as 10 percent.
“Germany is still one of the most attractive real estate markets in the world ... rents and values have been relatively stable,” Saul Goldstein, founder and managing partner of Jersey-based Activum said in a telephone interview.
“A lot of capital chased yields in Germany over the past four years using massive leverage, and a lot of these assets will be disgorged,” said Goldstein, who previously headed Europe real estate advisory at private equity firm Cerberus.
ACQUISITIONS
Activum, which is targeting to raise between 100 million euros and 150 million euros from US and European foundations and family offices for its first fund, made a first closing in August last year and so far has acquired two German commercial properties, he said.
The fund’s first purchase, in December, was an office and retail complex in Berlin whose owner had become insolvent, and in July, it bought a Frankfurt office building from a real estate subsidiary of troubled German lender WestLB.
“We love stressed and semi-distressed assets. When sellers recognize how much work it is to reposition an asset like that ... that gets reflected in the price,” said Goldstein, who declined to disclose financial details on the deals.
On Tuesday, German real estate fund manager Union Investment said it bought the Mercado shopping mall in Hamburg for 164 million euros in the country’s largest individual property deal so far this year.
Goldstein said the Activum fund was aiming to return between 1.5 to 2.5 times equity to its investors at the end of its seven-year fund life, and is avoiding Britain despite a sharp correction seen there over the past two years.
“I don’t think the UK has experienced the full range that it should ... to think that in a few years you’ll have a complete correction of the market is ridiculous,” he said.
LINGERING WEAKNESS
His views gelled with some experts who warn a sustained revival was still some way off because of lingering economic weakness in Britain, despite recent data which raised hopes of an imminent recovery in Britain’s battered property market.
“Another problem with the UK is there is a lot of capital chasing things now ... unlike in Germany where most of the funds that had bought with high leverage have pulled out. Now is the best time to be in a market like that,” Goldstein said.
US PUBLICATION: The results indicated a change in attitude after a 2023 survey showed 55 percent supported full-scale war to achieve unification, the report said More than half of Chinese were against the use of force to unify with Taiwan under any circumstances, a survey conducted by the Atlanta, Georgia-based Carter Center and Emory University found. The survey results, which were released on Wednesday in a report titled “Sovereignty, Security, & US-China Relations: Chinese Public Opinion,” showed that 55.1 percent of respondents agreed or somewhat agreed that “the Taiwan problem should not be resolved using force under any circumstances,” while 24.5 percent “strongly” or “somewhat” disagreed with the statement. The results indicated a change in attitude after a survey published in “Assessing Public Support for (Non)Peaceful Unification
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
‘MISGUIDED EDICT’: Two US representatives warned that Somalia’s passport move could result in severe retaliatory consequences and urged it to reverse its decision Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) has ordered that a special project be launched to counter China’s “legal warfare” distorting UN Resolution 2758, a foreign affairs official said yesterday. Somalia’s Civil Aviation Authority on Wednesday cited UN Resolution 2758 and Mogadishu’s compliance with the “one China” principle as it banned people from entering or transiting in the African nation using Taiwanese passports or other Taiwanese travel documents. The International Air Transport Association’s system shows that Taiwanese passport holders cannot enter Somalia or transit there. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) protested the move and warned Taiwanese against traveling to Somalia or Somaliland
SECURITY: Grassroots civil servants would only need to disclose their travel, while those who have access to classified information would be subject to stricter regulations The government is considering requiring legislators and elected officials to obtain prior approval before traveling to China to prevent Chinese infiltration, an official familiar with national security said yesterday. President William Lai (賴清德) in March announced 17 measures to counter China’s growing infiltration efforts, including requiring all civil servants to make trips to China more transparent so they can be held publicly accountable. The official said that the government is considering amending the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) to require all civil servants to follow strict regulations before traveling to China.
RSS