Sorgente Group, the Rome-based international real estate and asset manager, has made its first investment in the UK commercial property market, with the acquisition of Queensberry House in Mayfair, London.
The £167m deal is first Sorgente Group commercial real estate acquisition in the UK. The group’s closed-end real estate Donatello Fund David sub-fund has acquired 22,000 m2 of commercial space, incorporating shops and offices across five floors of Queensberry House, with seven floors of car parking space underground. There are also two top residential floors of some 1,000 m2.
The property was owned previously by Aviva Investors, a global asset manager. Built in 1990, the building has produced an average annual rental yield of around 5% and is fully leased to good tenants.
Sorgente’s portfolio also includes such trophy buildings as the Flatiron building in Manhattan and the Galleria Colonna, recently renamed Galleria Alberto Sordi, in Rome. The group at one time owned the Chrysler Building, an Art Deco skyscraper in Manhattan.
Giovanni Maria Benucci, managing director of Sorgente SGR – the asset management company which manages the Donatello Fund and made the transaction – said: “The acquisition of Queensberry House marks just the start of Sorgente Group’s move to become an active investor in the UK commercial property market. Office demand in London remains high and we believe this situation will continue to improve in the years to come as private sector business activity in particular is rejuvenated in the UK.
“Queensberry House gives us an important foothold in the UK as we pursue a strategic programme of international expansion that has already seen us manage assets over many years in the US and Italy.”
Professor Valter Mainetti, chief executive of Sorgente Group, said: “We want the London property market to sit up and take notice of our arrival. We are absolutely committed to building a long-term presence in the UK, drawing upon our decades of experience in managing properties at every stage of the macro-economic cycle.”
Sorgente Group is moving also to attract investment from UK-based institutions into its range of real estate funds. To support this strategy, a new company, Sorgente UK, has been formed to promote the group’s six real estate funds to UK institutional and private investors. This company will not be acquiring property on behalf of the real estate funds, but is rather a fund-raising vehicle.
In addition to Italy, the UK and Luxembourg, Sorgente Group is also active in the US and Switzerland. The group’s real estate assets, owned by the funds and underlying companies, including managed assets, amount to €4bn. Sorgente is now planning a programme of fundraising activity to lift this total under management to $10.3bn (€8.2bn) by 2015.
