The £2.6bn takeover of Canary Wharf by the Qatar Investment Authority and Brookfield Asset Management was enough to push the pair to the top the league table of net investors in UK real estate, according to data from Real Capital Analytics.
The research company found that the top 20 net investors in the UK accounted for a total of £21.1bn injected into the UK in 2015, over half of the total amount invested in real estate across Europe.
Legal & General flew the flag for UK investors in its home market with £1.8bn of net investment. But overseas companies dominated investment activity, with all but two in the top 10 net investors headquartered out of the country.
Standard Life, the second-largest property net investor of all UK-based firms, chose to do most of its £1.2bn of purchases on the Continent.
Elsewhere in Europe, large portfolio purchases by Klépierre, Vonovia and Blackstone put them marginally behind QIA, which made €7.4bn (£5.7bn) of net investment into the Continent.
Some notable companies were missing from the list of top net investors into both the UK and Europe, with M&G, CBRE GI and LaSalle Investment Management all failing to show in RCA’s top 20. Their absence was the result of balanced disposals and purchases over the year.
Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC was on the disposal trail in 2015, selling more than €2.1bn of assets over the year.
Of UK investors, Aberdeen Asset Management adopted a programme of risk reduction that resulted in the company divesting a net €1.8bn of assets across Europe.
The sale of the Maybourne hotel chain put the Barclay brothers’ long-running dispute behind them and, along with their co-owners, they were net sellers of £1.6bn of assets in 2015.
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