Hines has secured with ING in Germany the first green loan facility for the Hines Pan-European Core Fund (HECF). The loan will provide €39.6m ($48m) for Werfthaus, a prime office building located in Frankfurt, and €35.5m ($43m) for an urban logistics park let to international handling company Dnata, located near the cargo area at Heathrow airport, London. Both assets display better than average energy performance levels as well as sustainability certificates such as DGNB and BREEAM. The facility will enable the HECF to accelerate its strategy of pursuing sustainable and environmentally responsible real estate investments and strengthens a partnership between Hines and ING, started in 2015.
Simone Pozzato, Deputy Fund Manager for HECF at Hines, said: “The Fund’s investment strategy has always been clearly focused on making responsible and sustainable investments. However, this green loan facility gives us the capacity to deliver our investors’ ambitions of growing our portfolio of future-proofed assets where value and returns are aligned with environmental performance. Our partnership with ING and this loan commitment ensures not only great financial performance for our investors but also a positive impact on communities where we invest, achieving the highest levels of sustainability across a wide range of areas, including energy performance, stakeholder engagement, building certificates, resilience and utility management.”
Simone Schmidt, Managing Director of Real Estate Finance of ING Germany, said: “We are very proud to have issued ING Germany’s first green real estate loan to Hines, one of our top European clients. We are looking forward to more sustainable financing and further pan-European financing projects together.”
Sharif Nahas, Director of Financial Markets Sales in Germany & Austria at ING, said: “Interestingly for the GBP loan Hines has chosen SONIA (Sterling Overnight Index Average) compounded-in arrears as the interest reference rate, the first for ING Germany and ING Group globally on this new benchmark. We are excited to have concluded this bilateral loan over SONIA, also in light of the partial cash-flow hedge now being priced over SONIA as the market standard.”
