Bluehouse Capital’s Bucharest Office Buildings Sale, in Stand-by. The Buyer Cancels its Warsaw Listing

Meridian stopped the listing process during the initial public offer, referring to market’s “adverse” conditions, Bloomberg writes. The funds were intended for real estate acquisitions in Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czech Republic and Poland, according to Mediafax.

The company intended to buy some properties of Bluehouse Capital Advisors, which controls Meridian, according to the documents available on the company’s website.

"The investors didn’t like that Meridian would use the funds obtained through listing for buying properties from a company controlling Meridian. (...) Some properties are in South-Eastern Europe, which might also have discouraged the investors", has declared Jaroslaw Lis, deputy manager within BPH TFI mutual fund in Warsaw.

The listing of Meridian would have been one of the biggest on Warsaw Stock this year, according to Bloomberg.

The three office buildings in Romania the fund intended to buy are owned by Cyprus’ investment fund Bluehouse Capital. Astoria Business Center has an area of 4,636 sq m, Olympia Tower has 9,938 sq m and Victoria Center has an area of 8,256 sq m.

Meridian Properties announced in September its plan to attract on Polish Stock EUR 170 million through an initial public offer. The company would have used EUR 87.7 million to buy an initial portfolio of six office buildings and three retail parks in Bulgaria, Czech Republic and Romania. The company presented on its website information about the real estate assets intended to be bought.

The initial public offer should have closed by mid-October, according to Meridian Properties website information at that time.

Meridian Properties is a Real Estate Investment Trusts-REIT, a structure used in order to offer on the capital market the possibility to invest in the real estate sector. A real estate investment trust uses funds attracted from several investors to buy and manage real estate assets.

The company registered in Netherlands announced several months ago its intention to list on Warsaw stock, but the initial offer was postponed in June, due to market conditions. At that moment Meridian Properties aimed to get EUR 200 million on Stock, in order to buy with EUR 106 million real estate assets in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania.

The portfolio of Bluehouse Capital in Romania includes several real estate assets the company fully owns or controls shares in, such as Astoria Business Center, City Gate, Olympia Tower and Victoria Center.  (source: wall-street.ro)