Deputy Mayor of Belgrade, Goran Vesić and CEO of MPC Properties Ingo Nissen have officially laid down a foundation stone at the construction site of a new shopping centre in Belgrade with over 43,000 sqm of sales space and a total built area of 130,000 sqm. The project is a joint venture of MPC Properties, the largest investor in the region of South-East Europe and Atterbury Europe, focused on shopping centre investments and retail development opportunities in Europe, which will collectively invest more than €110 million in this project.

CEC Bank and Veranda Mall have signed two financing agreements totalling €34 million, aiming to refinance the development of the project and finance the expansion and modernisation of the shopping centre. Both funding rounds were provided in the form of investment credits for a period of 15 years.

Since the beginning of the year, more than €2.1 billion has been invested in Polish retail assets. JLL Poland summarised the situation on the local retail market at the end of Q3 2018.

Arena Mall shopping centre in Bacau, a reference for the retail market in the Moldova region, will enter into a comprehensive extension and modernization process that will result in a 60% increase of its leasable area and in the construction of a multi-storey car park.

There is room for online and conventional channel retail to continue co-existing side by side in the short to medium term in the CEE-6 markets, according to Colliers International. The solid further €71.5 billion expansion of retail sales out to 2022, 4.9% growth per annum overall, creates enough evolutionary room for multiple concepts to continue thriving. Conservative growth scenario sees e-commerce in CEE-6 expanding 8.8% per annum from a baseline of €13.1 billion to €20 billion.

Ikea intends to complete the construction of a €50 million retail park in Belgrade by the end of 2020, the company’s CEO for SEE, Stefan Vanoverbeke said.

Futureal Group signed a loan agreement for €150 million (roughly HUF 48 billion) with a consortium led by UniCredit acting as Bookrunner and Facility Agent. UniCredit and Erste Group will finance Buda's biggest shopping centre with equal parts, marking one of the largest shopping centre-related financings in Hungary over the past ten years. The construction of Etele Plaza, with a gross area of 137,000 square meters, is already underway.

Immofinanz has renounced its plans for the construction of a Stop Shop retail park in Braşov citing the lengthy process of obtaining a construction permit. The developer is considering selling the land.

pbb Deutsche Pfandbriefbank provided a facility of €68 million to ECE. pbb acted as arranger and sole lender under the facility.

The first half of 2018 on the Polish shopping centres market belonged to the biggest agglomerations. Over 172,000 sqm of new space was delivered, which constitutes about 75% of domestic supply. At the same time, the demand for retail space was still very high and the level of vacant buildings remained very low.