Commerz Real Expands Real Estate

Commerz Real just acquired the “Torre Alfa” office property in Milan for one of its open-end public property funds, hausInvest europa. The company invested approximately 83 million euros in the ten-storey building, raised in 2003. The vendor of the fully let building with a floor-space totalling 26,500 m² is the initiator of closed-end funds Sachsenfonds GmbH.

The property is situated in “Quartiere Affari” in the San Donato Milanese district, one of Milan’s most distinguished office locations. Several prestigious companies, domestic and foreign, have already relocated to this address, including the ENI Group as tenant of several administrative buildings, highlighting the superior market position that this office locale implies. The location benefits not just from a peerless tenancy structure, but also from a superb traffic connectivity and from the close proximity of the airport.

“The Torre Alfa represents our third office property acquisition in Milan this year. Altogether, we committed approximately 270 million euros there in 2007,” explains Hans-Joachim Kühl, Member of the Management Board at Commerz Real and in charge of real estate acquisitions. “The market is characterised by stable rents, including future mark-up potential. Milan, being Italy’s most important business metropolis, thus plays an important role within the broader context of expanding and further diversifying our European real estate portfolio.”
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About Commerz Real AG:
Commerz Real AG, a 100% Commerzbank AG subsidiary, was created by the merger of Commerz Grundbesitz Gruppe and CommerzLeasing und Immobilien AG. With 42 billion euros in assets under management, the new company is one of the world’s largest property asset managers and providers of leasing and investment solutions. Commerz Real focuses on the provision of investment products, such as open-end and closed-end property funds, institutional property funds, REITs, closed-end funds for ships, aviation, and renewable energy.

The spectrum of services includes moreover the area of structured investments, which combines the activities of real estate leasing, large movables leasing, and structured financings, as well as movables leasing.

With a fund volume of approximately 9 billion euros, the public fund hausInvest europa is Europe’s largest open-end property fund.