In May 2011, London-based private equity firm Orion Capital Managers acquired a 50% stake in the Spanish shopping centre and retail park for an equity cheque of €48 mln from UK REIT British Land.

At the time, British Land was reluctant to inject further equity into the shopping centre under construction and the contractor had reputedly walked off the site. Orion came in and convinced British Land to continue funding it. Then in the year after the centre opened, Orion bought the remaining 50% for €144.5 mln. Orion finished leasing the asset and eventually sold it in 2015 to Intu Properties for €451 mln.

The Puerto Venecia deal was not Orion’s first deal in Spain in the wake of the crisis. In 2009 it teamed up with US peer Colony Capital to buy a portion of a €4.2 bn syndicated loan in Inmobiliaria Colonial from Goldman Sachs. In that same year Orion also acquired Plenilunio shopping centre in Madrid for €235 mln from the frozen Banif Immobiliare fund managed by Spanish bank, Santander.

All of Orion’s Spanish deals display vision, timing and an ability to overcome a difficult situation.

1ST RUNNER-UP
In 2013 Victory Advisors bought The Atrium in Amsterdam for €100 mln from Avestus (formerly known as Quinlan Private) and Lloyds Bank. Rutger&Posch, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Rechstaete advised the buyer, while CBRE, Loyens Loeff and Allen&Overy acted for the seller.

Jury comment
The judges said the deal shows the buyer’s vision, timing and ability in acquiring an asset riddled with technical problems and tenant issues at a time of economic crisis, overcoming all the issues (including turning to an alternative lender for financing because banks were not interested) and then turning the asset around.

The Atrium was ‘far from an obvious investment at the time’, the jury said, but it is now being transformed into a state-of-the-art 60,000 m2 full-service complex. The acquisition also marked the bottom of the market in the Netherlands and sparked a new interest in investing in the Dutch office market.

2ND RUNNER-UP
In 2007, before the global financial crisis erupted, France's largest real estate investment trust Unibail and Rotterdam-based retail property company Rodamco Europe agreed to merge their activities in a conglomerate valued at €21.7 bn.

The new entity was – and still is - the largest property company in Europe by market capitalisation and the second largest retail property company in the world after Australia's Westfield Group. At the time, the newly merged group was the retail market leader in France, The Netherlands, Spain and Sweden and with 95 shopping centres across 14 European countries.