Allianz Real Estate expands UK presence with new London office
The real estate arm of German insurer Allianz Group has set up an office in London to help expand its presence and partnerships in the city and across Europe.
The €63.5bn Allianz Real Estate said the office will support the firm’s growing assets and strengthen its global footprint in areas where key partners are located.
”The new office will help drive origination and partner management for more complex cross border equity deals in Europe as well as the origination of pan-European debt activity where the asset or borrower sits in the UK,” the manager said.
It will also help develop third-party relationships with institutional investors based in London.
The manager has appointed Kari Pitkin as head of business development across Europe and Shripal Shah as head of debt origination – London, to lead the team serving the UK and pan-European clients.
Pitkin joins from Bank of America Merrill Lynch where she held the position of head of EMEA real estate and lodging, having joined the firm in 2005. Shah will join on 1 August. Since 2002 Shah covered senior positions in international real estate banking at Barclays Bank and HSBC before joining JCRA, where he has been head of real estate since 2016.
London has become an increasingly significant market for the company over the past two years, during which time it has completed a number of transactions.
In February this year, Allianz Real Estate in a UK student housing partnership with Greystar Real Estate Partners and the Public Sector Pension Investment Board has bought the Paul St East asset in London for £160m. In April, the firm financed a multi-let Southbank Central office asset in London for €200m for an affiliate of Starwood Capital Group.
This transaction represented a further London prime debt investment following financing for St Katharine Docks, 55 Baker Street and 80 Fenchurch Street, the manager said.
Francois Trausch, CEO, Allianz Real Estate, said: “Allianz Real Estate is committed to developing its portfolio in the UK. We have been successfully growing our assets in this market since 2017 but to enhance this further we have decided to open an office in London.
“London remains highly influential in a European and global context, and we believe there are excellent opportunities for growth and increased capital allocation.”
Roland Fuchs, head of European debt, Allianz Real Estate, said: “London has become a prime debt market for us and we have a large, growing number of partnerships with stakeholders based in the city.
“The success of our recently launched Luxembourg regulated European debt platform, which has included deals in the UK, and our related push into third-party funds in 2019 means now is a very appropriate time to expand our presence further.”
Source: realassets.ipe.com
BIMCO to open Athens office
BIMCO will open an office in Athens in the early summer of 2019. The objective is to have a stronger and closer dialogue with BIMCO’s Greek membership and to recruit more Greek members. The Greek shipowners are already the biggest group of BIMCO members measured by fleet size.
“Opening an office in Athens is an important step to make BIMCO even more member-focused,” says BIMCO President, Anastasios Papagiannopoulos, Principal of Common Progress.“There is a lot of regulation coming and being a BIMCO member will help Greek shipowners get the advice and information they need to make decisions about their business,” Papagiannopoulos says.The office will only be staffed with one person – like BIMCO’s office in Singapore – and the employee will report to BIMCO’s Head of Membership and Business Development, Erik Jensby. BIMCO is in the process of hiring the right person for the office.The office will be focused on servicing Greek members and promoting the benefits of joining BIMCO to non-members.“We want to be more visible in Athens. The job is to go and meet with members and potential members several times every day, to make sure they understand what we can do for them, and to gather feedback from our members,” says Jensby.The secretariat in Copenhagen will continue to be responsible for the day to day work on shipping policy and regulation.BIMCO has not found a physical location for the office, yet. The intention is to rent a space with another company, which is the solution BIMCO has used with its other local offices in Shanghai and Singapore.Currently, BIMCO has 152 Greek shipowners as members.The opening of the office was announced at a press briefing 3 April in Athens.