David Hatcher
Literally and metaphorically, the music was playing at Europe’s largest property festival this year. In fact, at MIPIM’s parties such as the ones thrown by Tristan Capital and Legal & General, it went on well into the night.
A slew of agents’ deal-volume surveys out for MIPIM week showed how vigorously it played last year – Knight Frank’s, for example, had deals up 44.6% in the Netherlands, 89% in Ireland and 144% in Spain, while Savills logged a 36% jump overall to €200bn in Europe’s 15 largest markets. Though sadly there are no such statistics for the level of lending fuelling this wall of sound, we can be sure debt was helping to turn up the volume.
M7 Real Estate is a company of our time. The pan-European industrial property specialist was born out of an outfit that crashed in the global financial crisis. Its key protagonists re-invented themselves with remarkable speed and its move from the London property industry’s traditional West End base to funky new offices in the more in-vogue Southwark last August encapsulates the firm’s approach.
Independently owned and set up by 10 former GPT Halverton senior managers following its 2009 collapse at the market’s nadir, M7 soon formed crucial joint ventures with the likes of Westbrook Partners and Europa Capital, helping propel the business.
As Europe’s real estate securitisation market comes back to life, our panel of industry experts discuss its chances of a return to pre-crash health and whether issuers have learned from the mistakes of CMBS 1.0. David Hatcher reports
Europe’s CMBS market is gradually reawakening, with the number of active banks and borrowers using this part of the debt capital markets slowly increasing, in line with broader investment volumes.
There is healthy demand from a select pool of investors set up to buy what is a labour-intensive product to underwrite, attracted by CMBS yields’ relative value. But a number of obstacles still stand in the way of Europe’s market becoming anywhere near as efficient and effective as that of the US.
Westbrook Partners has refinanced its high-profile Dolphin Square residential estate in Westminster, London with two financiers, Real Estate Capital can reveal.
Scottish Widows is the latest insurer to begin investing in commercial mortgages to help fund its pension liabilities, Real Estate Capital can reveal.
TIAA Henderson Real Estate’s lending business has completed three UK loans totalling £200m, Real Estate Capital can reveal.
LaSalle Investment Management is to start lending against real estate in the Benelux region.
Laxfield Capital and JC Rathbone Associates are collaborating to offer a new debt advisory service to real estate borrowers in the UK and Europe.
Deutsche Bank has released pricing guidance for its DECO 2015-HARP CMBS, the first secured by Irish collateral since 2006.
ING Real Estate Finance has syndicated the €125m loan it issued in November last year secured against the prime Madrid shopping centre Islazul, Real Estate Capital can reveal.