Wigan Acquisitions has started the new year with the completion on a multi-let office building in central Budapest, taking the total capital deployed on behalf of its family office and private equity partners to €135m. Austria House, a modern office building of 3,400 sqm GLA over ground level and 8 upper floors with the benefit of 41 underground car parking spaces, as well as being close to major public transport hubs, is in a prime downtown location of Budapest’s historic centre.
Capital Pro City Summit – Prague, Czech Republic – March 21-22, 2018
Over the past two decades, Central and South Eastern Europe has experienced remarkable economic transformations. It is estimated for every single percentage point of growth in the eurozone, the CEE and SEE countries are expected to grow by up to 1.5 to 3.5 percentage points.
Joining the podcast to discuss opportunities in Central and South Eastern Europe is Patrick Wigan, Director at Wigan Acquisitions. Wigan Acquisitions is a family office and private equity backed investment company targeting direct real estate and non-performing loan portfolios across Central and South Eastern Europe.
Budapest-based investment company Wigan Acquisitions has launched CERESA (‘Central Europe Real Estate Separate Accounts’) as a bespoke asset management platform for family offices and other principal equity partners looking to invest in direct real estate across the core markets of Central and South Eastern Europe.
CERESA is focused mainly on city centre retail (high street & food retail), core office buildings and alternatives such as purpose-built student housing projects. The main attraction being the long-term sustainable income prospects, capital appreciation and added-value potential through proactive asset management initiatives.
With a team of six local partners based in Prague, Vienna, Budapest and Zagreb, CERESA’s key advantages include being able to effectively source investment opportunities based on partners’ key preferences; fully appraise; secure debt finance; structure tax efficient joint-venture structures and offer full local asset management capabilities.
www.euromoneyseminars.com
Wigan Acquisitions’ Patrick Wigan outlines why co-investment strategies, NPL writedowns, and ‘deleveraging for growth’ is an effective means to drive attractive returns for institutional investors and a boost to deal volumes.
Our company Wigan Acquisitions is a family office and private equity backed principal investment company specialising in Central and South Eastern European direct real estate co-investments, asset management and private equity fund-raising.
CIJ Europe
Is the CEE/SEE region likely to attract more institutional investment? (and if so why?)
We tend to work more with family office and private equity capital partners rather than institutional investors, but believe that CEE/SEE likely to attract more commitments based on two main reasons: 1) capital in general increasingly targeting investments across the CEE/SEE region that offer the benefits of core locations/fundamentals at higher yield/opportunistic pricing on a relative basis compared to western Europe; and 2) pan-CEE/SEE NPL portfolios only just starting to be transacted, which should lead to attractive onward sale prospects for individual assets and portfolios without legacy debt liabilities as well as the increased supply helping to prevent yields from compressing too rapidly.
Henry Foy
It is a region marked by concerns over the actions of illiberal, populist governments, worried by clashes over policies with Brussels and the rest of the EU and with some states under threat of sovereign debt downgrades.
Central and eastern Europe is supposedly becoming a trickier place for investors to do business.
You would not guess this, however, from gazing at the steel and glass skylines, colossal shopping centres and office atriums of Warsaw, Budapest, Prague and Bratislava.
In preparation for the upcoming CEE GRI on 6-7 June, we interviewed Xavier Scheibli (Director, LNR Partners Europe), Patrick Wigan (MD, Investments & Capital-Raising, Wigan Acquisitions), Ondrej Špalek (Chief Operating & Finance Officer, Panattoni Europe) and Marilena Vuiu (Senior Banker, Property & Tourism, EBRD) to gather their thoughts on the Real Estate market in CEE & SEE.
By Thomas Duffell
Non-listed real estate funds have been knocked off the top spot for investors’ real estate vehicle of choice, according to a survey published by INREV, ANREV and PREA.
Joint ventures and club deals ranked first in a poll of the preferred access routes to property conducted by non-listed real estate’s three trade bodies.
According to the Investment Intentions Survey 2016, published on Tuesday by INREV, ANREV and PREA, non-listed real estate funds took second place with direct investments in third as real estate investors’ vehicle of choice.
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.