„We are in process of launching a new investment fund, different from the model tried with Meridian. It is a new private equity fund. The fund is intended for the entire region, including Romania. We are opened to new opportunities all the time. Our investment target is represented by assets over EUR 15-20 million“, has declared Ioannis Ganos, the investment director and CEO of Bluehouse Capital.
Bluehouse’s shareholders tried in 2013 to list on London Stock the company Meridian, hoping to gather EUR 170 million in the initial public offer. They intended to use EUR 87.7 million for buying an initial portfolio of six buildings and three retail parks in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romnia.
Ioannis Ganos says that the real estate financing is getting cheaper on the background of the Quantitative Easing – QE program started this spring by the Central European Bank.
„Two years ago, you couldn’t get credit in Romania, but now you can. The liquidity wave comes from the North, from Poland, towards the South“, says Bluehouse’s CEO.
The company recently sold the Praktiker store in Craiova to the investment fund Secure Property Development & Investment from Cyprus in a transaction of EUR 23.2 million, which included also a part of Delea Nouă Office Building and a package of dwellings situated on Grivita lakeside in Bucharest and in southern part of Bulgaria’s capital, assets took over from other investors.
Bluehouse had bought the Praktiker store in 2011 for EUR 10 million from the Cyprus’s businessmen Savva Stylianos and Panayi Panayiotis, shareholders of Omilos Investments.
Asked if he was preparing new exits from the Romanian market, Ioannis Ganos answered with “yes and no”. “Everything is for sale at the correct price. Other sale transactions could appear too, but I cannot make public now other information. We are not currently engaged in active negotiations“, also commented the representative of Bluehouse.
The most important properties owned by the investors in Romania include 41 pct shares of City Gate (the rest of 59 pct. being owned by GTC), the office building Victoria Center on Calea Victoriei, the office building Olympia Tower in Piaţa Muncii he Eva store on Magheru Blvd, all in Bucharest.
The company also owns half of a six hectares plot on Expoziţiei Blvd. in Bucharest, bought in 2007 from Compania Industrială Griviţa with EUR 72.9 million in one of the largest land transactions in Romania; the plot is co-owned in partnership with Rosebud Real Estate, the company controlled by the Israeli investors David Wiesmann and Shraga Biran. Another large plot of 14 ha, is owned in partnership with Spanish Hercesa in Prelungirea Ghencea, Bucharest. Both lands had as destination the development of large residential complexes, but the crises blocked the investors’plans. (source: capital.ro)
