2007-09-14

Ireland | Companies Investments REIT International

Quinlan Private Sells Charles Square Center in Prague for €90 Million

Ireland: DUBLIN, Ireland--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Quinlan Private, a leading international private equity and real estate group today announced that it has entered into an agreement, on behalf of a group of investors, to dispose of the Charles Square Center (“CSC”) in Prague, the Czech Republic, to Commerz Grundbesitz Gruppe (“CGG”), a German real estate investment company, on behalf of the group’s public property fund, hausInvest. Jones Lang LaSalle Capital Markets were retained as real estate advisors to Quinlan Private. Consideration for the transaction is approximately €90 million.

Prague is one of Europe’s leading, and fastest growing, city economies with economic growth significantly above the EU average. Prague enjoys a well diversified economic base and is a leading destination for both multi-national occupiers and real estate capital.

The CSC is a prominent strategically located building in downtown Prague and forms part of the City’s dynamic and expanding business area. The CSC benefits from direct access to the City’s extensive and efficient transport system.

The CSC was acquired by Quinlan Private in 2003 for approximately €56m. The CSC consists of a nine-storey building designed around an impressive central atrium. The building is almost fully-leased, and comprises 20,000m2 of rentable area including 15,000m2 of office accommodation and 5,000m2 of retail space.

Peter Donnelly, Quinlan Private Partner, commented “We are delighted to have successfully completed this transaction on behalf of our clients. The sale of the CSC demonstrates Quinlan Private’s continuing ability to identify high quality, low risk opportunities in Central and Eastern Europe. In a short time, Quinlan Private has successfully executed an asset and lease management strategy and disposed of the property delivering attractive returns for our investor group. Our objective is to continue to identify similarly attractive opportunities for our clients.”

About Quinlan Private

Quinlan Private is a leading international private equity and real estate group. Quinlan Private acts as a principal and advisor in originating, structuring, financing, developing and managing a diversified portfolio of assets. It has effective distribution capacity and partners with major international banking groups to place private equity in real estate investments. Total assets under management exceed €10 billion in Ireland, the UK, Western, Central and Eastern Europe and the US. These assets include hotels, shopping centres, commercial office blocks, residential developments and others. Quinlan Private has principal offices in Dublin, New York and London as well as in Central and Eastern Europe. www.quinlanprivate.com

About Commerz Grundbesitz

Commerz Grundbesitz ranks among the global leaders in real estate asset management, managing open-end property retail funds along with institutional property funds and REITs. The Group currently manages real estate worldwide with a volume of approximately 12 billion euros in 15 different countries. With foreign real estate assets of approximately 10 billion euros, and a gross lettable area of about 3 million square metres, Commerz Grundbesitz Group is one of Europe’s largest real estate investment houses.

The Group includes Commerz Grundbesitz-Investment GmbH (CGI), a capital investment company founded in 1992, which manages the Group’s retail funds. These include the market leader hausInvest europa, with a fund volume of more than 8.5 billion euros Europe’s largest open-end property fund.

In March 2004, CGI started hausInvest global, an open-end fund with investments worldwide and a fund volume now worth more than 1.6 billion euros. By founding the French investment trust CeGeREAL in 2006, Commerz Grundbesitz Group became the first German real estate company to launch a REIT.

Business Wire - 2007-09-14