vestor Level One files for insolvency - Intelligence Report - REFIRE

....from page 13
on recent funds inflows by Martin Praum
and John Perry, two London analysts at
Deutsche Bank, suggested that with leverage,
the funds now have at least �€16bn extra
to invest, not counting the proceeds of sales
made since May 2006.
The open-ended funds are aggressively
looking to take advantage of falling markets
and a strong euro by investing in the UK,
US and elsewhere. With yields in parts of
the UK having risen from 3.75% last year
to up to 6.5% at the moment, investors like
Deka Immobilien Investment are re-entering
the UK market which they abandoned three
years ago, most recently buying two London
properties for €240m. Schroders recently
set up a �600m fund for German institutional
investors to buy shopping centres, office
and logistic properties in the UK, and reports
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that they’re now buying properties at up to a
40% discount on pre-crunch prices.
The mood among Germany’s closedended
funds is nowhere near as optimistic,
according to Scope Analysts in Berlin
in their twice-yearly study of fund initiators
and brokers. Pessimism is at its highest
for five years, they reported, particularly
among their brokers. 16% of their brokers
described the selling environment as poor,
up from 7% over the same period last year.
The percentage of fund initiators taking such
a gloomy outlook rose from 2% to 13% in
the period. Apart from the credit crunch, the
main reasons given are the still high prices
and a shortage of suitable properties, plus
the high interest rates for more liquid capital
investments. Their focus is now more on
German properties.
Germany/Financing
Belgian bank KBC expands
German financing business
16
KBC Bank Deutschland AG, the German
branch of Belgian KBC Bank, is making
steady steps as a niche commercial property
financier in Germany after starting up
in the market at the beginning of 2007.
The bank has specialised in financing small
and mid-sized companies expanding on
the German market, taking the financing
risk onto its own books.
Since setting up in Germany, KBC has
financed 42 projects with a total credit volume
of �€440m. In the first half of this year it
financed about �€200m of property deals, and
plans to open a new office in northern Germany.
Given the climate, the bank has set