CBRE promotes Tudor Ionescu as Head of Advisory & Transaction Services for the office sector of CBRE Romania. The nomination of Tudor, a professional architect, specialised in workplace consultancy, represents a change of strategy of CBRE, which becomes the first real estate company focusing on the experience of users in office spaces.

HB Reavis has received a new syndicated loan from Erste Group and Raiffeisen Bank International Group (RBI Group) for the construction and development of Agora Budapest. The recently signed facility amount of €140 million makes it one of the largest in the Hungarian real estate sector. The financing club is led by Erste Group as book-runner and facility agent. Erste Group and RBI Group will finance the Agora Budapest project with equal parts.

As part of the largest ever transaction on the Hungarian office market, Futureal Group has sold the fifth office complex developed on Corvin Promenade to OTP Real Estate Investment Fund. Through this transaction, OTP Prime Real Estate Investment Fund has now acquired the Corvin Technology Park office building from the group. Following the sale, the office portfolio of real estate funds managed by OTP Real Estate Investment Fund Management Ltd. will offer nearly 100,000 square meters on Corvin Promenade.

Kraków is continuing its good run as Poland's second largest office market. During the first six months, lease contracts for nearly 135,000 sqm were signed in Kraków which equates to 44% of demand for modern office space outside Warsaw. The most notable transactions in H1 2019 signed both in Kraków and in the largest regional markets in Poland were a record pre-let by UBS for 19,600 sqm in Fabryczna Office Park, a pre-let by Sabre for almost 16,000 sqm in the Tischnera Office, and an 11,200 sqm renewal by Akamai in the Vinci Office Building.

French-based investment fund AEW has sold the America House office building in Bucharest to the real estate investment division of Morgan Stanley in association with a group of Israeli investors highly active on the real estate market, represented by David Hay

JLL will be responsible for leasing commercial space in Airport City Gdańsk. Construction of the complex, whose usable area will ultimately total approximately 120,000 sqm, will start at the end of this year.

User expectations have changed significantly during the past couple of years and this is a challenge that most landlords do not take lightly. Mátyás Gereben MRICS, Country Manager of CPI Hungary talked to Property Forum about the changing needs of office tenants and the shopping centre of the future.

OTP Real Estate Investment Fund has acquired the 26,000 sqm Roosevelt office building in central Budapest. The seller was Munich-based GLL Real Estate Partners (GLL).

Českomoravská Nemovitosti has acquired the BLOX office building in Prague's Dejvice district for more than €77 million (CZK 2 billion). The building's primary tenant is Amazon.  The acquisition was financed by ČSOB.

The number of office schemes built in Prague this year is the highest in the last five years: a total of 17 new buildings providing office space will have opened by the end of the year. The last time the market reached such a high figure was in 2014 – at the time, it was 18 schemes. In the meantime, the number was one-third lower, about 11 buildings on average.