Investment flows increase in central and eastern Europe.
By Jan Cienski in Warsaw
A period of lacklustre competition is coming to a close for Globalworth, a property business with the lion’s share of its €500m invested in Bucharest, the Romanian capital. The money pouring into central Europe is starting to move beyond the safe and stable Polish and Czech markets to higher-yielding frontier countries.
Dimitris Raptis, Globalworth’s deputy chief executive, says: “There is less competition right now for the deals we are interested in. Everyone is looking at Poland and that’s not bad for us, because we are able to target assets at attractive prices.”
His company is raising an additional €200m to invest in Romania. “But if one believes in market cycles and global capital flows, yields in Warsaw and Prague will fall to such a low level that it will drive investors to our markets.”
His prognosis is based on the strong increase in investment flows seen across central and eastern Europe last year.
Polish investment activity: the sale of the Silesia shopping mall in Poland was one of last year’s largest transactions
In 2013, Russia, the region’s largest market, enjoyed a 40 per cent increase in transactions to €5.2bn, according to property company CBRE. Poland, the second largest, saw a 9 per cent rise to €3bn, while the Czech Republic was up by 68 per cent at €1bn. In all, every significant market except Ukraine saw deals increase last year. Ukrainian transactions tumbled to €41m from €241m in 2012.
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