Futureal Group concluded a loan contract of €150m with a consortium led by UniCredit acting as Bookrunner and Facility Agent. UniCredit and Erste Group will finance the shopping centre with equal parts, marking one of the largest shopping centre-related financings in Hungary over the past ten years. Etele Plaza, with a gross area of 137,000m², will be built in the immediate vicinity of Etele square, the largest multimodal transport hub of Hungary.
Etele Plaza will comprise 180 shops and will feature the centre will also feature a supermarket, restaurants, cafés, a multiplex cinema, a gym, a children’s play centre and a range of other services with nearly 1,300 parking lots. The most advanced location and navigation system will facilitate parking in the building by indicating empty spaces, it will also help customers to find the chosen stores or services through a mobile application.
According to the expectations, the primary catchment area of Etele Plaza will attract nearly 40,000 shoppers from the capital on a daily basis. The residents of the district represent 125% of the national average purchasing power under a relatively low degree of retail supply.
‘The cooperation with UniCredit and Erste Group is unprecedented in this area in the past ten years in Hungary. With Etele Plaza, we create a shopping and entertainment centre of unparalleled, visionary design, which – as a long-needed commercial development – will also give an impetus to the development of the neighbourhood,’ said Pal Darida, Treasury and Financing Director said.
‘Our goal is to satisfy our clients' financing needs with a competitive project and syndicated loans tailored to their individual needs, thereby contributing to the implementation of their major projects. We kept this in mind also in the case of Etele Plaza, one of the most significant projects of the Central and Eastern European property market, envisaged by Futureal Group,’ added Gabor Voros, Head of Financing at UniCredit Bank.
‘Erste Group and Futureal Group are in close business partnership for more than a decade. In the course of our cooperation, our bank has participated in the financing of several successful office development projects, underlining our strong commitment to financial partnership and value creation. We are happy that this successful relationship has come to a new milestone with the financing of Futureal Group’s new flagship project, the Etele Plaza Shopping Mall,’ said Zoltan Balazs, head of Real Estate and Structured Finance at Erste Bank Hungary.
