Aviva Investors and LaSalle have acquired the 69 Haussmann office building in Paris on behalf of the pan-European fund, Encore+, for €128 mln.
The building is part of a bigger office complex known as Paris Haussmann, which is located in the Central Business District area of the French capital. The asset comprises more than 7,400 m2 of lettable floor space, situated over eight floors. It is home to a range of high-profile businesses including UBS and Rabobank.
Ian Williamson, fund manager at LaSalle Investment Management, said: 'This acquisition, which is the largest that we made last year on behalf of Encore+, matches all of the criteria for the fund strategy; this is to acquire in longstanding quality locations, and where active asset management will generate outperformance, driven primarily by income going forward.'
Encore+ is a diversified, Continental European real estate fund which aims to build a €1 bn portfolio to deliver stable and growing income alongside long-term capital appreciation, from an actively managed portfolio, in a monthly-dealt, open-ended fund structure.
The fund has been co-managed by LaSalle as fund manager, and Aviva Investors as asset manager, for almost 10 years. It was recently ranked by MSCI as the top performing fund on a three-year rolling basis in the IPD Pan-European Property Funds Balanced Funds Index (PEFPI). The three-year return for the fund is more than 9% at end-June 2016.