* The Dutch residential mortgage fund of Syntrus Achmea Vastgoed BV's Syntrus Achmea Real Estate & Finance received a €500 million commitment from Gothaer Asset Management AG, IPE Real Assets reported. The asset management arm of German insurer Gothaer is Syntrus' first foreign client after the private investment firm opened its healthcare real estate and residential mortgage funds to investors based abroad in 2019, according to the report.
* Schroders PLC said Schroder Real Estate Hotels held a first close for its first hotel fund with €300 million in capital commitments. Schroder European Operating Hotel Fund I, which has a target size of €500 million and is domiciled in Luxembourg, is structured as a closed-end limited partnership with a three-year investment period and an eight-year life.
* Dartmouth Capital Advisors Inc., on behalf of Singapore's City Developments Ltd., was granted planning permission for the development of a £300 million six-star hotel in Kensington, U.K., according to Property Week. The new hotel at 28 Pavilion Road will comprise 120 rooms, a bar, a spa and 23,000 square feet of retail space. The site of the new hotel features a disused underground pedestrian and goods tunnel that heads to Harrods department store.
* Harrison Street Real Estate Capital LLC and Trinity Investment Management are set to purchase five laboratory and office properties across the U.K. in a deal valued at £250 million, London's Financial Times reported. The duo agreed to buy the roughly 1.6 million square feet of life sciences space in Kent, Colworth, Manchester, Newcastle and Edinburgh, housing tenants such as GW Pharmaceuticals and Unilever.
UK and Ireland
* Goldman Sachs tapped property agency Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. to look for about 60,000 square feet of office space outside London to accommodate a new department, The (U.K.) Times reported, citing property website React News. The move is in line with the government's efforts to spur economic performance and wealth creation across the U.K., according to the report.
* Billionaire Joseph Safra and architects Foster & Partners filed an appeal to resurrect plans for The Tulip tower in London after the government rejected their proposal in 2019, according to PW. The City of London Corp. granted permission to build the 1,000-foot-tall tower in April 2019, although London Mayor Sadiq Khan overruled the decision in July, saying the skyscraper would "not constitute the very highest quality of design," according to the report.
* Oxley Holdings Ltd. and Ballymore completed the €115 million off-market sale of an office building in Dublin to Iput PLC. The Singapore-based property company received €86.0 million from the sale of the No. 3 Dublin Landings property at 72-80 North Wall Quay.
* The Dublin office market's vacancy rate plunged to 8.4% at the end of December 2019 on the back of strong demand and a lower volume of immediately available supply, The Irish Times reported, citing Cushman & Wakefield. Including signed and reserved office space, the vacancy rate is even lower at 4.7%, while vacancy in Dublin's central business district is at 2.7%. The newspaper reported that the demand for office space in the Irish capital continues to be driven by tech companies such as Google, Amazon and Intercom.
Germany
* LaSalle Investment Management Inc. acquired two AccorHotels-branded hotels in Munich from Commerz Real AG for an undisclosed amount. The 162-room Ibis Budget hotel and 160-room Adagio Access hotel are in the city's Olympic Park and were built in 2014. Commerz Real sold the hotel properties for its Encore+ fund.
Netherlands
* Cording Real Estate Group Ltd. acquired three industrial and logistics properties in the Netherlands for its Cording Euro Real Estate Fund. The portfolio comprising two light industrial properties in Zwolle and Cuijk and a small logistics asset in Utrecht has a combined lettable area of about 10,500 square meters and is fully let to three tenants.
France
* SEDCO Capital teamed up with Inovalis Group to develop the Convergence building in Paris. The seven-story project at 17-19 rue des Deux Gares in Rueil-Malmaison spans 24,997 square meters of office and services space with 255 square meters of retail area. The building will be equipped with alternative workspaces, terraces, restaurants, auditoriums, fitness facilities, a cafeteria and interior gardens.
Inovalis acquired full ownership of the site in 2005 and demolished a building on the plot. Construction work for the Convergence building started in the autumn of 2018 and is expected to finish in May.
The Nordics
* Swedish pensions and insurance group Folksam AB committed 1 billion Swedish kronor to the Silvestica Green Forest fund, IPE Real Assets reported. The forestry fund also received investment from Norway's KLP and Sweden's FPK. The forestry seeks to buy woodlands in the Nordic region to manage it sustainably. The vehicle's €500 million funding round reached full subscription at the end of 2019, according to the news outlet.
* Castellum AB is set to build an approximately 4,600-square-meter retail outlet in Hisings Backa, Sweden, for an investment worth 82 million kronor, including existing building rights at 12 million kronor. The Swedish property company signed a 10-year lease with tools and equipment distributor Ahlsell. Construction of the retail outlet in the Gothenburg region is expected to start in January and is targeted for occupancy by March 2021.
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