Globalworth published a trading update summarising the key highlights of its operating performance during the first six months of the year, including some further updates as to the impact of the pandemic crisis on its operations.

The Romanian unit of German automotive parts supplier Continental has completed a €27 million investment in the expansion of its office building in Iași.

Law firm Kinstellar has successfully represented OTP Bank and its Bulgarian subsidiary, DSK Bank, in negotiating a €25 million loan for the construction and operation of Balkan Business Center, a major office complex in Sofia.

Romanian real estate developer One United Properties is selling part of its One Cotroceni Park urban regeneration project, currently under development in Bucharest, for €25 million. The amount raised is to be invested in the further development of the project, profit.ro reports.

The top 50 largest technology companies in Romania, which realise software and digital solutions for group companies or for third parties, have increased their turnover and teams in Romania by approximately four times in the last ten years, reaching a cumulative turnover of €3 billion and over 50,000 employees in 2019, according to a Cushman & Wakefield Echinox analysis.

In the first half of 2020, Globalworth leased nearly 50,000 sqm of office space in its buildings in Poland. In the last 3 months, during very difficult time of the COVID-19 pandemic, the asset management & leasing department of the CEE office investor has signed contracts for a total area exceeding 28,000 sqm.

BWI Group, a global automotive suspension parts design and manufacturing company, has moved into a unique passive building in Europe. The group's research and development centre will begin operations in Balice near Kraków, where advanced technologies will be developed to increase the functionality of shock absorbers. The developer, 7R, has prepared an energy self-sufficient facility for the company, using an advanced trigeneration system. The building will obtain a BREEAM Very Good certificate.

United Business Center 3 in Timișoara has become the only LEED ‘Platinum’ certified office building in Romania outside Bucharest and the third one in the country.

What will the Warsaw office market look like in the next 18 months? Experts of Savills have outlined two potential scenarios. Both scenarios foresee a short-term decrease in demand and rising vacancy rates, but with a different scale of impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Polish capital’s office market. Both also forecast that the market will remain resilient in the long term.

Total demand on the Budapest office market in Q2 2020 reached 87,990 sqm, representing a 46% decrease year-on-year and the number of signed transactions dropped by almost 50% compared to the same quarter of 2019, according to BRF’s latest figures.