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.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
CHINA REACTS: The patrol and reconnaissance plane ‘transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,’ the 7th Fleet said, while Taipei said it saw nothing unusual The US 7th Fleet yesterday said that a US Navy P-8A Poseidon flew through the Taiwan Strait, a day after US and Chinese defense heads held their first talks since November 2022 in an effort to reduce regional tensions. The patrol and reconnaissance plane “transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,” the 7th Fleet said in a news release. “By operating within the Taiwan Strait in accordance with international law, the United States upholds the navigational rights and freedoms of all nations.” In a separate statement, the Ministry of National Defense said that it monitored nearby waters and airspace as the aircraft
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique