The Greenman Group is launching GFORM, a commercial real estate and financial management platform, with a particular speciality in grocery-anchored real estate in Germany. Headed by James McEvoy, CEO, and Maren Große-Loscher, CFO, who have both worked for Greenman for more than 8 years, GFORM will grow its €1.08bn of assets under management from the Greenman OPEN fund with the addition of mandates from third party investment and fund managers that currently own assets in Germany or with aspirations to build a portfolio of grocery-anchored assets in the country.
The team at GFORM has extensive expertise in the grocery-anchored real estate sector and a strong track record of managing and operating assets occupied by some of Germany’s most well-known retailers, such as EDEKA, Kaufland, REWE, Lidl and Aldi. The relationships developed with these retailers over the past 15 years have enabled them to build the Greenman OPEN portfolio to in excess of €1bn in AUM and allowed them to negotiate a series of tenant framework agreements that extended leases in the portfolio by 15-20 years, securing c. €120m in additional income and extending the portfolio’s WARLT by 20%. The team already have additional tenant framework agreements in the pipeline for 2023.
GFORM’s offering goes beyond that of a typical asset manager, paying particular attention to the tenant / landlord relationship, the ethos of entrepreneurship, and the high delivery standards demanded by some of the most sophisticated grocery operators in Europe. Some of the services the team offers include performance analysis, leasing, rent collection, side-cost accounting, as well as aspects of financial management, including business planning, forecasting, and bookkeeping.
The platform will work closely with some of the other Greenman Group businesses, including White Bird, which will manage the technical asset management aspects of building maintenance and repairs, and Greenman Energy to install and run renewable energy schemes including photovoltaic panels and electric vehicle charging points across suitable assets, providing a comprehensive suite of real estate services.
Commenting on the launch, James McEvoy, CEO of GFORM, said: “The grocery-anchored real estate sector proved its resilience during the pandemic, establishing itself as a stable real estate asset class against a background of structural change across the industry and ongoing volatility caused by multiple economic shocks. As we look to the future of the sector from an investor’s perspective, the focus for real estate managers will be on ensuring the longevity and sustainability of assets well into the future. We believe that to do this the tenant must come first. We place significant importance on becoming long-term partners with our tenants, supporting their needs, and ultimately making decisions based upon what’s good for our partnership. These relationships also create significant opportunities for our clients and their investors and are key to the generation of sustainable long-term value from the assets.”
