Investment fund Focus Estate Fund has set the goal to expand the geography of its presence in Central and Eastern Europe. In the next two years, the Fund plans to more than double its portfolio by strengthening its position in the niche of medium-sized commercial real estate in Poland and the Czech Republic, as well as by entering the Slovak market.

Modesta Real Estate continues to be the exclusive broker for lettings in Westend Tower, Bratislava. The company successfully arranged office space for a large number of companies over the past few months. In addition to many new contracts, the leases of some major companies have recently been extended. These include international companies such as Kovintrade and the pharmaceutical and biotechnology company Adamed.

LPP SA, the biggest Polish clothing manufacturer in Central and Eastern Europe (owner of five fashion brands: Reserved, Cropp, House, Mohito, and Sinsay) in line with its development strategy for the coming years, leased 25,400 sqm of industrial space from PNK Group in PNK Park SEREĎ in Slovakia. The contract provides for an option to lease another 7,300 sqm in the same building within three years. Therefore, the company could occupy the entire second building of the PNK Park SEREĎ with an area of 32,700 sqm. JLL acted as a consultant for the preparation and execution of this lease contract which is one of the biggest transactions recently recorded in the Slovak market.

JLL Slovak Capital Markets & Advisory team has successfully advised on closing a sale of an industrial and commercial park in Vráble. JLL team acted on behalf of the seller, a real estate investment and asset management company, which disposed its industrial asset in Western Slovakia to Proxenta Investment Group. The value of the transaction remains confidential.

Penta Real Estate has sold the Business Centrum Tesla 2 office building project in Košice to Austrian company European City Estates. BCT 2 provides 14,600 square meters of office space. The largest tenants are T-Systems Slovakia, Deloitte, Diebold-Nixdorf and Colonnade. On the seller side, the transaction was advised by JLL. The purchase price was not disclosed upon agreement between the parties.

Martin Miklas was named the new CFO of HB Reavis. He took this position over from CEO Marian Herman, who had kept these responsibilities even after becoming CEO last year. Martin, so far, has mostly been responsible for the non-real estate businesses of HB Reavis shareholder.

Prologis has begun construction of a build-to-suit project for CBA Slovakia on a 6-hectare site in Ziar nad Hronom in the Banska Bystrica Region of Slovakia.

Prologis announced that Martin Baláž has been promoted to Vice President, Country Manager, Prologis Czech Republic and Slovakia.

According to JLL, CEE's real estate investment transactional volume for 2018 was in excess of €13.23 billion and recorded an 11% increase over 2017 (€11.92 billion). JLL has registered continued appetite from investors for the full range of assets across the entire region. Poland smashed its previous record volume set in 2006 (€5.05 billion) with a spectacular €7.2 billion traded, and secured a massive regional share of 54%. Poland was followed by the Czech Republic (€2.51 billion - 19% share), Hungary (€1.85 billion - 14%), Romania (€900 million - 7%) and Slovakia (€820 million - 6%).

Prologis has completed construction of two new speculative facilities totalling 25,300 square meters at Prologis Park Bratislava. The developments include 9,800 square meters in Building 14, of which 2,700 square meters are pre-leased to Electronic Star, an e-commerce retailer and 2,900 square meters to Blitshtein Trading, a food distributor serving major CEE markets, in addition to 15,500 square meters in Building 20.