Go office fund from industrial investor will target Germany for wealthy individuals
Industrial investor Halverton is branching out into the office sector by launching a German offices fund.
The vehicle, called Go, has €35m in equity and €130m in invested capital. The fund is being sponsored by Jones Lang LaSalle Corporate Finance and aims to achieve a distribution yield of 7%. Its target investors are wealthy individuals.
“We started with industrial just because of my background,” said Halverton director and co-founder Richard Croft, who previously worked for IoG Teesland. “But with 70 people working for Halverton across Europe, we can focus on various sectors.”
Go is one of a number of funds Halverton is about to launch. The fund manager is also working on a European office fund and a pan-European distribution warehouse fund. Next year it plans to launch a retail fund and a Nordic industrial fund.
Halverton also plans to open new offices next year, including ones in markets it is new to, such as Helsinki, Stockholm, Vienna and Athens.
Croft wants to launch three or four new funds every year and to have €5bn of assets under management by the end of 2008. Halverton buys multi-let, modern buildings with relatively short leases, seeking to create added value by actively managing the income stream. The fund manager likes to buy single assets rather than large portfolios and is working on a €500m pipeline of deals.
To strengthen its cash position, Halverton has sold two stakes of 25% each to Australian investors Babcock & Brown and GPT for an undisclosed sum. The remaining 50% will stay in the hands of management.
Babcock & Brown is already linked with Halverton through the closed-ended HBI venture. This fund has invested more than €1.5bn in multi-let industrial assets in Germany, the Netherlands, France and Denmark.
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