French Insurer First Third-Party Investor in Bouwinvest Dutch Office Fund as Market Recovers

In a signal that the office market in the Netherlands is now back on theradar screen of international investors, a French insurance company has become the first third-party institution to invest in the Bouwinvest Dutch Institutional Office Fund (Bouwinvest Office Fund) of real estate investment manager Bouwinvest, with a €10 million stake through its advisor Amundi Real Estate.

Dick van Hal, Chairman of the board of directors Bouwinvest: “We welcome this investor as the first third-party investor in the Bouwinvest Office Fund and indeed also as the first foreign institutional investor in our range of specialist property sector funds in the Netherlands. This initial investment is important for what it symbolises. International institutional investors are now starting to buy into the recovery story for the core Dutch office market generally, rather than just focus directly on a few individual prime assets, as has been largely the case in recent years. There has been a positive switch in the perception of risk and performance for top office assets and locations and a widening polarisation between the best and the rest.”

The Bouwinvest Office Fund has total assets of about € 562 million (Q2 2015) managed, until now, for anchor investor the Dutch Construction Workers Pension Fund (bpfBOUW). The 30 offices in the portfolio are distributed across the main cities in the Randstad central urban conurbation of the Netherlands. In 2013 and 2014 the Fund won benchmarker IPD’s European Office Property Investment Award.

The multi-year outperformance of the Bouwinvest Office Fund is due to a carefully calibrated investment strategy that targets mix-use assets in diversified prime office locations in the main cities of the Randstad. Investment returns are optimised through the continual monitoring of the performance of individual properties and active buying and selling, as well as intense hand-on asset management in cooperation with tenants and building management partners.

The quality of the working environment as well as the high sustainability standards of the buildings makes them desirable locations for companies. The emphasis on mixed-use and flexible workspaces also insulates the Fund against future evolutions in local real estate markets and business sectors, to preserve the value of the assets for Bouwinvest’s institutional investors.

Nicholas Holford for Amundi Real Estate said: “Our client’s real estate investment strategy is to target core assets in mature, transparent and stable European markets through the best third-party fund managers. So Bouwinvest’s investment performance track record and the quality of its portfolio in the Netherlands were key factors in our capital commitment to their Office Fund.”

About Amundi Real Estate
Amundi Real Estate is Amundi’s management company specialising in developing, structuring and managing property funds for private investors, private banks and their distributors, institutional investors, corporates and real estate professionals. N°1 in terms of fund-raising for SCPI and retail OPCI ( IEIF – February 2015) and N°2 in SCPI and OPCI management in France in terms of assets under management (IEIF – February 2015). Amundi Real Estate has € 10.7 billion of assets under management (pro forma data for Amundi Immobilier at 30 June 2015). www.amundi-immobilier.com