Cordea Savills has announced that it is launching Italian Opportunities No. 2. This is an investment venture for institutional investors targeting net returns of 20% p.a. by exploiting single asset and portfolio real estate opportunities identified by the Cordea Savills' Milan-based investment team.
Italian Opportunities No. 2 follows on from Cordea Savills' first Italian Opportunities venture which was launched in July 2006. Within three months Italian Opportunities No.1 ("IO1") had acquired over €300 million of property assets and by April 2007 was fully invested, having acquired assets with a gross value including participations in excess of €1 billion. Cordea Savills believes this success is due to the quality of its Italian team, which combines strong local market knowledge with the international and asset management expertise required to unlock and execute transactions and produce opportunistic returns.
Reflecting its predecessor's investor profile, Cordea Savills believes that Italian Opportunities No. 2 will generate a high level of interest from pension fund and fund of fund investors who are increasingly looking to access the European property market via specialist single market funds. Italian Opportunities No. 2 will be a Luxembourg Fonds d'Investissement Spécialisés (FIS) and aims to raise more than €300 million of equity.
Dominic White, Director of Investment, said, "The second Italian Opportunities venture will continue the same strategy of acquiring property from a variety of sources, executing transactions quickly and efficiently and managing portfolios via trading and repositioning to extract the maximum returns. We are also considering asset disposals via more innovative routes including listing sub-portfolios rather than simply selling buildings. This will add further value creation possibilities."
Nick Hayward, Director of Institutional Business, added, "Italian Opportunities No. 1 has proved to be a highly attractive formula for institutional investors. They are becoming increasingly drawn to the dynamics of the Italian property market, and to specialist ventures in particular that have the potential to generate higher returns."
Although Italy is one of the largest European economies, Cordea Savills believes that with the prevalence of off-market transactions, high levels of owner-occupation and little active management of the many properties in the market, there is considerable potential to generate strong returns.
Source: Cordea Savills
