KKR has completed a final close of its first dedicated European real estate fund.
The US private equity house raised $739m (£500m) for the KKR Real Estate Partners Europe fund as it looks to expand its real estate business.
Its primary geographic focus is expected to be in the core markets of France, the UK, Germany, Spain and Italy, plus Ireland and Belgium.
The team, led by head of European real estate Guillaume Cassou, will focus on opportunistic investments and real estate-related transactions across western Europe.
These will include investments in debt and real estate-owning companies.
The new fund has been backed by public pensions, insurance companies, private banks and high-net-worth individuals. It has been seeded with six investments spread across Europe.
Although KKR is the world’s second-largest private equity firm by capital raised, it was a late entrant to global real estate investing, raising its first dedicated real estate fund in 2013 with an initial $1.5bn of capital.
More than half of that capital was dedicated to investing in US property.
However, over the past three years the company has invested $1.3bn overall in real estate across Europe.
