Occam New Home, a subsidiary of investment-development group Occam Real Estate, concluded negotiations for the entry of a strategic partner in December. Slovak investment group Across acquired a 50% stake in the company through its subsidiary Across Properties.

Globalworth announced the signing of two new facilities with Erste Group for an aggregate amount of €160 million. These facilities are part of the ongoing strategic management of our liquidity and debt management initiatives, further strengthening the company's liquidity position at attractive market terms.

A JV of Investika – a Czech retail investment fund, and Bud Holdings – a Luxembourg-based private equity company, became the new owner of the entire Face2Face Business Campus in Katowice. Echo Investment signed a sale agreement for the complex comprising two office buildings. The agreed price is about €110 million.

Panattoni has sold its fully-leased Silesia East logistics park near Katowice in the south of Poland, to Palmira Polska Sp. z.o.o, the Polish subsidiary of Frankfurt-headquartered investor and asset manager Palmira Capital Partners. The 32,000 sqm Grade A complex is part of a major logistics hub around Katowice, the capital of the Silesia region, which borders the Czech Republic and Slovakia and lies at the heart of the industrial and manufacturing centre of Central and Eastern Europe. The parties agreed not to disclose the value of the transaction.

Some developers forecast that sales prices will increase in the future purely as a result of the zero-emission requirements currently being placed on buildings but there is no consensus as to what the ultimate effect will be. Robert David, Partner and Tomáš Kren, Senior Associate at Wolf Theiss’ Prague office talked to Property Forum about the increasingly important role ESG compliance plays in real estate transactions and potential regulatory changes that can affect the market.

Union Investment has sold the Maraton office building in Poznań, to a subsidiary of UNIQA Real Estate, the real estate company of the Austrian insurance company UNIQA Insurance Group AG. The building has been held by open-ended real estate fund Unilmmo: Deutschland since 2017. The purchase price was not disclosed.

Taking into account the mood and current investment activity, it would seem that the recession in global markets is only just developing. A clear slowdown in real estate transactions has been visible since mid-2022. Several factors contributed to it, including the increase in interest rates, uncertainty related to the geopolitical situation, the war in Ukraine, games between the USA, Taiwan and China, as well as the instability of government and economy in Great Britain and economic problems in China, claims Michał Ćwikliński, Principal, Managing Director – Poland at Avison Young. 

Recent data from Arnold Investments show that around €152 billion was transacted on the EU real estate investment markets in the first three quarters of 2022. Year-on-year, this represents a decline of around 4% due to a strong first quarter. However, investment activity slowed down sharply in the course of the year. At roughly 39 billion, the transaction volume for the third quarter was around 39% lower than in the previous year. The main EU investment markets analyzed show a significant decline in transaction volumes both over the course of the year and in the third quarter.

MDC2 has appointed Martin Healey, a senior global property executive, to its Board. He is a senior international real estate investment professional with almost 25 years of experience. Martin is the Managing Director of Real Assets, and a member of the Global Leadership Team of CPP Investments, a global investment management organization.

NEPI Rockcastle, through its subsidiary, has acquired all the issued shares in the Forum Gdańsk shopping centre from a company ultimately owned by Blackstone-managed funds. The transaction encompassed the repayment of all the asset’s outstanding debt. Forum Gdańsk is a 63,500 sqm GLA shopping centre, situated in Gdańsk, the sixth largest city in Poland by population, with over 470,000 inhabitants.