A €1.1bn (£790m) pan-European office portfolio that includes trophy buildings in London, Glasgow and Cardiff has been placed under offer by a French asset manager owned by Crédit Agricole and Société Générale.
Project Aqua, which is being sold by German open-ended fund manager Union Investment and marketed by JLL’s EMEA capital markets team in London, is being bought by Amundi Real Estate for a price reflecting a yield of less than 6%.
Amundi fought off competition from Ares Management and North Star Realty Finance for the deal.
The portfolio comprises 17 assets in the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Finland totalling 3m sq ft with annual income of €60m and an average unexpired lease term of just over seven years.
The UK assets are the 146,000 sq ft 11 Westferry Circus, E14, the 68,000 sq ft Equinox in Glasgow and the 207,000 sq ft Admiral Building in Cardiff.
The largest European assets are Atrium Boulogne, France; Goldbach office park in Ratingen, Germany; and Florido Tower in Vienna, Austria.
Amundi Real Estate has €7.7bn of assets under management and last year bought €1.5bn across Europe. It manages 92 funds and in April launched a €700m fund seeded by electricity firm EDF.
Its parent, Amundi Asset Management, which has €954bn under its control, is currently 80% owned by Crédit Agricole and 20% by Société Générale.
This week, however, the pair announced their intention to launch an initial public offering of the business on the Paris stock exchange, in a move that will see SocGen sell its stake in order to boost its tier-one capital ratio. Crédit Agricole intends to retain its 80%.
All parties declined to comment.
