An EUR 800mln investment by Israeli property company Gazit-Globe and US investor CPI Property Investors (CPI) in Austrian-listed property developer Meinl European Land (MEL) has been approved by Meinl shareholders in an extraordinary general meeting.
An EUR 800mln investment by Israeli property company Gazit-Globe and US investor CPI Property Investors (CPI) in Austrian-listed property developer Meinl European Land (MEL) has been approved by Meinl shareholders in an extraordinary general meeting.
CPI and Gazit said that Meinl shareholders had approved all resolutions related to the transaction, which was originally recommended by the MEL board on 20 March 2008. These include changing the name of the company to Atrium European Real Estate and CPI and Gazit providing up to EUR 800mln in new investment, comprising an EUR 500mln convertible securities issue and an EUR 300mln rights issue to MEL certificate holders guaranteed by CPI and Gazit. Meinl certificate holders also agreed that new independent and executive board members would be appointed, effective at the closing of the transaction.
‘Our initial focus will be on creating predictable and sustainable cash flows from its existing assets and growing the business through accretive developments and acquisitions, as Atrium looks to become one of the foremost real estate investors and developers in Europe,’ said Shanti Sen, managing director and merchant banking head at CPI and a proposed Atrium board director.
Meinl is a real estate investment and development company whose primary focus is on retail assets in Central and Eastern Europe. At 31 December 2007, it had 162 operating investment properties with a market value of about EUR 1.9bn and a significant portfolio of development projects with an expected investment requirement of EUR 3.3bn, of which EUR 800mln had been spent as of end-2007.