Henderson Global Investors, the independent asset manager with 14.0 bln. of real estate assets under management throughout Europe, has announced the second closing of its sector specialist pan-European retail property fund, HERALD, the Henderson European Retail Property Fund, having raised around of 280 mln. in additional equity.
Across both closings, the Fund has now raised over 700 mln. of equity and should reach a fully invested fund size of approximately 1.5 bln. In addition, The Fund has attracted 16 new institutional investors bringing the total number of investors in the fund to 39. The investors at the second closing include Merrill Lynch European Property Fund of Funds, NFU Mutual, Deutsche Ring, as well as clients of Morley Fund Management.
HERALD is about to complete the investment program for the first equity raise of 427 mln. and has a number of additional acquisitions in the pipeline. Following the second closing, the Fund will continue to focus its investment program on retail warehouse and shopping centre assets in Eurozone countries with a particular country focus on Spain, Italy, France and Germany.
Managed by Patrick Bingham, Director of Property, Retail (Europe), HERALD is supported by the full resources and expertise of Henderson's retail asset management team, dedicated property research team and Henderson's extensive office network across Europe. It is structured as a Fonds Commun de Placement vehicle (FCP) domiciled in Luxembourg.
Commenting on the second closing of HERALD, Neil Varnham, Director of Property, Retail (Europe) said: "The Fund is continuing to perform very well despite recent concerns in the market, demonstrating Henderson's asset management and fund management capabilities. The vehicle has an extensive deal flow across Europe and we have a pipeline of acquisitions planned for the year ahead so that we can quickly draw our new investors down. We are confident that we can continue to find and extract value from retail assets across Europe and thus continue to outperform our 9%p.a. IRR hurdle."
Austin Mitchell, Business Development Manager (Europe) added: "We have received an extremely positive response from investors for this second equity tranche. The team's track record of being able to quickly complete deals that enable us to leverage the strong asset management resource within the team has undoubtedly been a key factor in attracting further investment to the Fund. We are additionally delighted to welcome both new investors to the Fund as well as existing investors who are clearly pleased with our performance to date."
Source: Financial Communications
