Paul Yandall

Tristan Capital and Avestus Capital Partners have jointly purchased an office park in Poland with a €71m five-year loan from pbb Deutsche Pfandbriefbank. The new facility will be used to acquire Enterprise Park and adjacent development land in Kraków.

pbb Deutsche Pfandbriefbank increased its real estate finance portfolio by 8% to €23.5bn in the first three months of 2015 compared to the end of last year. Commercial real estate finance accounted for €2.7bn of its total new business of €2.8bn, according to the German bank's Q1 2015 results.

HB Reavis raised €310m in debt financing last year mainly from Warsaw-based Bank Pekao, according to its annual report to 31 December 2014. The Slovak developer, which owns more than 30 schemes across Europe and the UK including 33 Central in the City of London, raised another €69m in debt this year, again mainly from Pekao.

Aviva Investors has appointed Ed Casal as chief executive of its global real estate business. He replaces Ian Womack who is retiring. Casal is currently managing director of Aviva Investors' global indirect real estate. He joined Aviva in 2008 and has previously been chief investment officer at the firm’s real estate multi manager.

Bank Austria and pbb Deutsche Pfandbriefbank have jointly underwritten a €300m long-term senior loan for Vienna-based Immofinanz Group. The facility is to be used to refinance a real estate portfolio containing 38 office and residential properties, most of them in Vienna.

Debt fund financing will show the most growth in real estate lending and the residential sector will offer the best opportunities in the UK, according to the Loan Market Association’s real estate finance survey for 2015. The survey of 210 LMA members aimed to find where they believed the key investment opportunities and challenges lay in Europe and which sectors were most likely to drive future growth.

Aviva Commercial Finance has hired Barclays’ head of London real estate, Gregor Bamert.

Barclays has funded Green REIT's €58m purchase of One Albert Quay in Cork, Ireland. Green REIT used part of a €150m revolving credit facility provided by Barclays late last year to make the purchase announced today.

Real estate debt borrowers should be wary of turning to alternative lenders because they were more likely to go after the underlying property, the LMA Real Estate Finance Conference heard today. RBS director of real estate finance Jason Presence told an audience at Allen & Overy’s offices in London that some non-bank lenders were effectively acting as ‘lend to own’ buyers.

British Land raised £1.9bn of debt finance including a five year £785m unsecured revolving credit facility for the year to 31 March 2015. It reduced its weighted average interest rate by 30bps to 3.8% over the period and lowered its LTV to 35% from 40% in the previous year.