AEW Europe received more than €2.2bn (£1.57m) in new capital commitments during 2014, the company has announced.
The figure represents the highest commitment the business has seen in a single year and was spread across five funds, two new separate accounts and two transferred mandates. Of the investors, 35 were new institutions.
The UK saw significant investment, including the purchase of The Bridges a 602,784sq ft shopping centre in Sunderland, Tyne and Wear. Financed by Deka Bank, AEW paid Land Securities £152m for Sunderland’s only shopping centre.
In total the UK Core fund doubled in size to €210m by the end of 2014.
Total returns for the fund exceeded benchmarks at 4.9% and it was the best performing UK balanced fund for the two years to the end of December 2014.
By the end of 2014 the fund had invested €1.7bn in 49 acquisitions across Europe. The majority of these were in core assets but 2014 also saw the company make more investment into value-add and opportunistic assets on behalf of clients.
AEW also disposed of 25 assets valued at €1.2bn, taking the total transaction volume at AEW to €2.9bn for 2014.
Rob Wilkinson, chief executive at AEW Europe, said: “2014 has been another year of significant progress for AEW Europe, both in terms of transaction volumes and due to the fact that we raised more capital in a single year than at any time in our history. We welcomed a significant number of new European and international investors to the firm and we look forward to building long-term relationships with them. The outlook for the year ahead is equally promising. We also plan to further expand and strengthen our European debt platform and look forward to offering more innovative investment strategies in order to deliver the highest possible levels of performance for our clients.”
