Banks in Europe are expecting a slow recovery in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and while they forecast that hotel and retail loan portfolios will likely be hit more considerably than office and other real estate asset classes, the majority of them believes that the impairment will be in the range of a few percentage points up to 10% in total. These are some of the early findings from the COVID-specific section of this year's edition of KPMG's Property Lending Barometer, due to be published in autumn 2020.

Industrial property specialist Gazeley announced that it is adopting the GLP brand name following its acquisition by the global investment manager in 2017. In addition, GLP announces that it has closed on the acquisition of Goodman Group’s Central and Eastern European logistics real estate portfolio.

Results from the INREV Quarterly Index for the first quarter of 2020 reveal initial signs of the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the European real estate industry, with the lowest quarterly performance since Q4 2012.

According to Savills, the average spread between prime industrial and prime shopping centre yields across mainland Europe has converged for the first time in its historic series as demand for logistics and soars as a result of increased levels in e-commerce.

Warsaw is among the top 10 European cities for the fintech sector. According to Savills, which prepared the ranking, the COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating the digitalisation of the banking sector and Poland provides a favourable environment for fintechs to expand.

The European construction industry will be hit hard by the COVID-19 crisis, according to Euroconstruct's latest forecast for 19 European member states.

Reduced output in March & May in the automotive sector could change the typical activity curve in 2020, with busier summer months ahead to make up for lost time. Colliers International has just launched its recent research piece in which e it discusses the importance of particular months for the manufacturing sector in the EMEA region as well as presents the outlook for the coming months.

Global investment firm KKR and Franek Sodzawiczny, a leading data centre entrepreneur and executive, announced the formation of Global Technical Realty, a build-to-suit and roll-up acquisition data centre platform in Europe.

European real estate investment activity is set to plummet by 50% before rebounding sharply within the next 12 months, according to Savills, who predicts that neither the speed or the depth of the crash will be as bad as the global financial crisis when volumes across the continent plunged by 72% between 2007-2009.

TTB Partners, a Hong Kong-based investment and advisory firm, announced the acquisition of a minority stake in M7 Real Estate.  The investment is the latest step in a wider collaboration between the two companies, as they seek to capitalize on the continued appetite from Asian investors for European real estate.  TTB will utilize its own network of contacts in the region to access new capital pools looking to invest in the UK and pan-European real estate, either through joint ventures or through investment funds.