Robin Marriott
The German real estate and infrastructure lender announced a multi-billion euro credit facility today to shield it from disaster. It was enough, Hypo said, to cover its funding needs “well into the future”. Shares crashed 70 percent on the news.
Songbird Estates, whose main investment is Canary Wharf Group which owns the London-based European headquarters of Lehman Brothers, says the full impact of Lehman’s demise is hard to quantify. Lehman’s leases more than 1 million square feet in a building in Canary Wharf.
A survey of UK pension fund trustees has found that more than a quarter are planning to increase allocations to commercial real estate, while around half will maintain their exposure over the medium term.
A survey has found that 25 percent of European investors are considering cutting their exposure to real estate funds in the short-term, yet investors are also planning to increase their exposure to opportunity funds.
PricewaterhouseCoopers, the administrators to Lehman Brothers in the UK, has discovered more than 200 subsidiaries and joint ventures across the region. Investors are lodging their expressions of interest.
Talks to sell a stake in the bank’s investment management division, including a $30bn private equity portfolio, will continue, despite its march toward insolvency.
The German insurance firm, which is the process of building a global property investment business, has acquired a stake in a New York office on the Avenue of the Americas.
Sovereign wealth funds have entered British football with The Abu Dhabi United Group, headed by ‘the Donald Trump of Abu Dhabi’, agreeing to buy Manchester City. Dubai International Capital previously tried to purchase a stake in the Tom Hicks-owned Liverpool team.
The private equity fund, listed on the London Stock Exchange, has invested half of the $400m it raised in its IPO last November.
Paul Rivlin and Neil Lawson-May, the duo who staged a management buyout of Eurohypo Asset Management in April, have hired former Eurohypo real estate investment bankers Keith Davidson and James Tarry as they plan a series of debt funds.