S&P Global Market Intelligence offers our top picks of European real estate news stories and more published throughout the week.
Deal or no deal
* European rental housing operator Greystar is no longer pursuing the purchase of a build-to-rent portfolio in the U.K. that has a collective development value of approximately £1 billion, Property Week reported. The prospective buyer and Inhabit ended talks, which reportedly began in April. The sites in Aberdeen, Birmingham, Bristol, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester can accommodate about 3,500 apartments.
* Swedish property developer Bonava AB will trade 679 rental apartments in Germany and Sweden for a sum worth about 1.75 billion Swedish kronor. Of the total, Industria Wohnen GmbH will buy 470 rental apartments in Berlin's Parkstadt Karlshorst neighborhood for about 1.26 billion kronor and redevelop the site to yield about 1,000 new homes.
Västerstaden will pay 496 million kronor for Bonava's 209 rental apartment units in the Tuve neighborhood of Gothenburg, Sweden.
* Tritax Big Box REIT PLC wrapped up an agreement to forward-fund the development of a new logistics fulfillment center close to Durham in the U.K., with a commitment of as much as £147.3 million. The pre-leased facility at the 200-acre Integra 61 project will offer about 1,992,061 square feet of internal gross floor area upon completion in the summer of 2020.
* Real estate company Castellum AB plans to sign an at least 1.1 billion-kronor deal for the acquisition of five adjacent properties, encompassing about 3 million square meters in Sweden, and develop them for logistics and production use. The deal involves all of Serneke Group AB's real estate assets in and around the Säve Airport.
Cherry on the cake
* Private equity giant Blackstone Group LP's affiliate Alzette Investment SARL, which owns 97.91% of the outstanding share capital of Hispania Activos Inmobiliarios, disclosed plans to launch an offer for the acquisition of the 2,283,182 remaining shares that it does not hold in the Spanish hotelier.
Hispania's board of directors will convene an extraordinary shareholders' meeting at the end of January 2019 to solicit approval for the delisting of its shares, effective April 1, 2019.
As of Dec. 27, US$1 was equivalent to 9.01 Swedish kronor.