The EBRD and IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, are boosting the retail sector in Serbia, Montenegro and FYR Macedonia with €164 million in loans to the investment firm Hystead.

Curzon Capital Partners III (CCP III), a core plus Fund advised by Tristan Capital Partners, has completed a €64 million sale of Praha City Center office to Amundi Asset Management.

NEPI Rockcastle has acquired the Festival Sibiu mall project from Primavera Development for €21 million. Reff&Asociatii provided legal assistance for NEPI in signing this deal.

Hystead Limited, a UK company co-owned by Hyprop Investments Limited (Hyprop) and PDI Investment Holdings Limited (PDI), has acquired a 90% interest in two Croatian shopping centres. The purchase consideration net of €154.4 million asset-based finance is €129.1 million, of which Hyprop’s effective share is approximately €77.5 million. The two malls, namely City Center one Zagreb West and City Center one Zagreb East, are located in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. The transaction is conditional upon approval of the Croatian competition authority and is expected to close at the end of March 2018.

Budapest-based investment company Wigan Acquisitions has completed the acquisition of a multi-let office building in downtown Budapest, taking the total capital deployed on behalf of its family office and private equity partners to €135 million.

2017 was not the strongest year for Slovakia’s investment market but if all goes well we might see the previous record of €850 million being broken this year. Peter Nitschneider, Country Manager for Slovakia at JLL shared his expectations for the Slovak property investment market.

With GDP growth outperforming by a significant extent neighbouring CEE countries, 2017 was very good for the real estate market in Romania, especially for office, investment and land segments. According to Colliers International’s new report, the market’s dynamism will be extended through 2018, supported by new demand and trends in the capital and especially in the major regional cities in the country.

The level of confidence in Central and Eastern European markets seems to have peaked according to the RICS Commercial Property Monitor. Expectations are still highly positive, but sentiment indices have topped out in the previous two quarters. Results for Q4 2017 demonstrate that both occupier and investment demand is still strong but the share of those who believe that some markets are close to peaking is growing steadily.

According to the latest analysis prepared by the Capital Markets team Cushman & Wakefield, investment volumes in Central and Eastern Europe reached nearly €13 billion in 2017. All CEE countries grew at a similar rate and maintained their share of the overall regional volume. Despite political risk perceptions, Poland grew most rapidly at 9% y-o-y from approx. €4.6 billion to €5 billion, which was the highest result recorded in the last 10 years. 2018 has already seen the benefit of deals that slipped from late 2017 with the investment volume in Q1 2018 likely to exceed €3 billion.

NEPI Rockcastle published its results for 2017. The total value of direct property portfolio owned and managed by NEPI Rockcastle exceeded €5 billion (including joint-ventures). Acquisitions and developments finalised during 2017 totalled €947 million, with 339,800 sqm GLA added.