The consortium of the two listed property companies conwert Immobilien Invest AG and ECO Business-Immobilien AG (50:50 joint venture) has acquired the entire Austrian property portfolio of the Allianz Austria Group. Thus, conwert and ECO have made one of the largest purchases of a property package in the history of Austrian real estate. The newly acquired property portfolio comprises a total of 106 properties with a total usable space of around 215,000 m². The total volume of the transaction totals slightly over €450 million.
Around half of the property assets will be held by conwert and ECO on a longterm basis. The remaining 50% were acquired through an acquisition and trading holding company. In addition to conwert and ECO, Pirelli RE, one of Europe's largest property companies also has an interest of one third through its German subsidiary P & K Real Estate.
From the Allianz portfolio, conwert is taking 24 properties with total a usable space of 69,000 m². The majority of the properties are used for residential purposes and are located in Vienna, including a large number of representative older properties in the centre of Vienna, such as on Kärntner Ring or in Bösendorfer Strasse.
In terms of location, ECO is taking on four outstanding properties. The properties are almost exclusively used for office and commercial purposes and have a total usable space of 25,000 m². These include such prominent addresses as Opernringhof vis-à-vis the State Opera House in Vienna or high quality office buildings in the centre of Vienna.
The joint portfolio, in which some of the newly acquired properties may be sold again, comprises a total of 78 properties. In addition to conwert and ECO (which each have an interest of 33.33%), P & K Real Estate, a subsidiary of Pirelli RE (90%) and Kronberg International (10%), also has a 33.33% investment in the joint portfolio. The total usable space of the joint portfolio amounts to around 121,000 m². Approximately half of the properties are located in Vienna, the others can mostly be found at top locations in Austrian state capitals. 31 properties (39,000 m²) are mostly used for residential purposes, 47 of them are used as office and commercial spaces (82,000 m²).
conwert and ECO will systematically continue their growth path in future as well. Following the successful conclusion of the Allianz deal, conwert primarily plans to focus on advancing the development of its international property portfolio. Steps in this expansion may also be implemented together with an internationally strong partner such as Pirelli RE in order to profit from its international presence and to combine it with conwert's own residential property expertise.
ECO's acquisition pipeline is also well stocked with several projects: In total, the company has investment capital of more than €200 million the property portfolio can therefore be expanded to include further attractive properties and thereby can be increased to around EUR 750m in the course of the next quarter.
Source: conwert
