AXA Real Estate announces that it has completed construction of, and delivered, the 30,000 m² Citizen building in Paris. The development was acquired in 2010 and pre-let in its entirety to Coface, the global credit insurance provider, in July 2010, with construction commencing in October 2010, and was pre-sold in July 2012 to Union Investment Real Estate GmbH.
The scheme was the first development opportunity acquired by the Development Venture III (‘DVIII’) Fund, which raised €588.5 million of equity providing it with up to €2.5 billion of development capacity.
The Citizen building will serve as the global headquarters of Coface and accommodate 1,400 employees who will be brought under one roof from two locations in Paris. As a part of AXA Real Estate’s commitment to sustainable development, the building has secured a BREEAM Very Good rating as well as BBC Effinergie and HQE certifications.
The building is situated alongside the French corporate headquarters of Aviva, IBM and Colgate which were also developed by AXA Real Estate through its French Development Venture and French Development Venture II funds and it represents the 16th major corporate headquarters that it has developed over the last 11 years.
Jean-Manuel Rossi, Global Head of Developments at AXA Real Estate, said:
“Citizen is a fantastic example of the type of high quality grade A office product that AXA Real Estate’s development team can deliver. It is also another illustration of a high-profile purpose built corporate headquarters that AXA Real Estate has successfully developed, an area of the market in which we have significant experience and expertise.
“The proceeds of the sale of Citizen once completed will be reinvested into our substantial pipeline of development deals in DVIII, situated across the full risk spectrum ranging from land and speculative developments through to refurbishments, as we seek to deliver completed projects at an optimum time in the market cycle. We are actively examining further opportunities in Paris and Europe’s premier cities to increase the scale of our development programme as we seek to leverage our unique development expertise to deliver compelling returns to our investors.”
Source: AXA Real Estate
