Institutional investors and tenants were especially active. In what was a rare €500 mln+ transaction in the office sector in 2022, institutional buyer Deka closed a €566 mln sale and leaseback with the owner of Booking.com, sealing the acquisition of the travel giant’s new Amsterdam HQ.

Several tenants acquired occupational real estate from their landlords, including a Coop subsidiary which paid €180 mln for 36 of its Spanish cash and carry distribution centres and a water company which bought its 13th district Paris office, with Deka featuring once again, as Eau de Paris’s landlord.

Schroders Capital bought two prime-located ‘lifestyle’ hotels, in Paris and Amsterdam, in December for €260 mln and has since followed that investment with a hotel in Ibiza  - its fourth hotel buy in 12 months - for which financial details have not emerged.

Blackstone continued to slowly divest European shopping centres, closing the disposal of  the Forum Gdansk Shopping Centre in the northern Polish port city at the end of the year, for €250 mln. NEPI Rockcastle’s investment is one of the biggest single shopping centre transactions by value in Europe in 2022 and follows the company’s acquisition of the 48,000 m2 GLA Copernicus Shopping Centre in Torun, north-central Poland, for €127 mln, announced in November.

Harrison Street found a Singaporean buyer, CDL, for four UK student accommodation assets.

The biggest deal was a sale that took almost two years: on 30 December, three Portuguese banks finally recouped cash from their exposure to two funds managed by ECS. Opportunistic investor Davidson Kempner trumped Bain and Cerberus, and now owns the 30 assets which include 10 NAU hotels, a Hilton golf and spa resort, four shopping centres and land.

Tristan Capital Partners also managed to land a chunky distressed deal as the year closed: the manager bought a big residential portfolio in Germany from a subsidiary of the struggling Adler Group. The properties will be owned by its latest opportunity fund, Episo 6, which this week held a final close on €2 bn of equity.

We also track other funds, including M&G Real Estate’s launch of its European residential fund, and loans closed at the end of December.

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