US fund manager The Carlyle Group has raised €430m with the final closing of its European real estate fund.
European Real Estate Partners has 80% of institutional capital with the rest coming from individual investors. Around half of its investors contributed in US dollars, with the weakness of the dollar affecting final euro totals.
The fund, which had its first closing last March, has already invested €280m in 15 deals. The purchases in France, Germany, Italy and the UK included 36 properties bought from Italy’s Minstero dell’ Economia e delle Finanze.
It also bought a 16,260m2 building in the City of London for £67m, an 11-storey Düsseldorf office building and two Paris offices blocks.
Eric Sasson, Carlyle managing director and head of the European real estate team, said raising capital for the fund had been tougher than anticipated in the post-11 September economy and because of the Iraq war. “It was Carlyle’s first European real estate fund; next time we will have a track record, which is what matters when raising capital for Europe,” he added.
The fund expects to commit the remaining €150m this year and early in 2005 with the intention of raising a second fund. The minimum equity size for each deal will be €20m.
Sasson is keen to diversify further by country and asset class. He expects competition for assets to come from private investors. “People are switching from stocks and bonds to property,” he said.
