The €300 million sale of NEPI Rockcastle’s Romanian office portfolio to AFI Europe has been suspended due to the coronavirus crisis, Profit.ro reports.
The sales agreement was signed at the end of last year and the transaction would have had to be completed by the end of Q1 2020, but the buyer did not meet certain contractual conditions, according to Profit.ro’s sources.
The Romanian daily writes that the transaction was structured in a way that would not make it easy for AFI Europe to back out of it. This is reportedly the result of AFI Europe cancelling the €164 million sale of its AFI Park office building to Dedeman back in 2017. Different sources referred by Profit.ro estimate that the closing of the transaction could be delayed by 1 to 3 months or the deal could even be cancelled.
NEPI Rockcastle’s Romanian office portfolio, with a GLA of 118,500 sqm, incudes four Class A office projects totalizing eight office buildings situated in Bucharest and Timisoara. After this transaction and the completion of ongoing office projects (AFI Park Brasov and AFI Tech Park 2-3), AFI Europe Romania would have become one of the largest office landlords in Romania with a portfolio of 282,000 sqm GLA.
