Internos Global Investors, the pan-European investment manager, today announces the first close of the Internos Core European (ICE) Balanced fund, having secured capital commitments of €135m from six institutional clients of Townsend Group, which include insurance companies and public and private sector pension funds based in Europe and Asia.
With a target gross asset value of €2bn over five years, the fund‘s maiden acquisition is a €200m investment in a seed portfolio comprising nine properties including seven office assets, one logistics asset and one mixed use asset. The properties are located in France, Italy, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands.
An open-ended Special-AIF, ICE Balanced is targeting total returns of 8% using modest leverage by creating a portfolio of quality commercial real estate and property assets across the major metropolitan markets in Europe and the United Kingdom. The fund will invest predominantly in office, retail, logistics and industrial assets with up to 20% allocated to more specialist property asset classes.
Andrew Thornton, CEO of INTERNOS Global Investors, commented: “The launch of ICE Balanced marks a transformational moment for INTERNOS. Since our launch in 2008, we have built a high quality platform with strength and depth across Europe’s major geographical real estate markets in both traditional and specialist asset classes. We now have six funds actively investing across Europe.”
Giles Smith, Head of Fund Management at INTERNOS Global Investors, added: “We are leveraging our experience across markets and sectors to build a high quality portfolio of core assets capable of delivering attractive returns to long-term liability matching institutional investors. With our first acquisition complete, the team is now working on a pipeline of single asset and portfolio acquisitions, sourced according to the fundamentals of the assets, micro-locations and local occupier markets.”
Morgan Angus, Principal at The Townsend Group, commented: “We are excited to partner with such a high quality manager to continue Townsend’s track record of accessing core real estate markets in unique and innovative ways and look forward to helping Internos achieve its long term growth aspirations for the fund. We are pleased to provide our clients with this proprietary opportunity to access a strong portfolio of core real estate in Europe with fundamental value and without the extended drawdown periods that usually accompany such investments”
