Barings Real Estate Advisers, part of Barings LLC, one of the world’s largest diversified real estate investment managers, announced that it has acquired the Entresse Shopping Centre in Espoo, Finland, from the CapMan Group for €30.4m as part of its pan-European value add strategy.
The Entresse Shopping Centre is a modern retail centre constructed in 2008. Currently 82% let, the centre offers a gross lettable area of 9,754 m² across 40 units, as well as a heated garage providing space for 300 cars. The centre benefits from Espoo’s position as the second largest city in Finland, with a population of 270,000 which is set to increase further following major planned infrastructure improvements. Entresse is well connected, just a short walk from Espoo train station, providing access to Helsinki city centre in 25 minutes.
Barings Real Estate Advisers has identified a range of asset management initiatives to improve occupancy and value of the centre, including a capex programme to reconfigure and upgrade the property to introduce new retailers and food and beverage operators.
Göran Bengtsson, Managing Director and Head of the Nordics at Barings Real Estate Advisers, said, “Espoo is Finland’s second largest city and with long-term population growth outperforming the national average and the increasing appeal of the area as one of Helsinki´s leading suburban locations, further growth is expected. These demographic changes, combined with the high build quality of Entresse, its close proximity to public transport and plans for further development of the area, made it a very compelling acquisition opportunity. We have already planned a range of initiatives to introduce new tenants to the scheme and further improve the retail centre”.
Gunther Deutsch, Managing Director and Head of Investment Transactions Europe at Barings Real Estate Advisers said, “With the acquisition of this dominant regional shopping centre we have concluded our second transaction for this particular value add strategy. With our longstanding Scandic retail track record and experienced team in Helsinki we are well placed to carry out a successful repositioning of the asset. Sweden and Finland are the Nordic markets which we will continue to focus on and look to identify retail, office and logistics assets. As well as value add opportunities we are also actively looking at core and core plus assets”.
Barings Real Estate Advisers is part of Barings LLC, one of the world’s largest diversified real estate investment managers. The group is an active investor in private and public, equity and debt markets, and provides core, value-added, and opportunistic investment and advisory services to institutional and other qualified investors around the globe.
