M7 acquires 115,000 sq m portfolio from Danish Bank

London, 16 November 2016 – M7 Real Estate (“M7”), the pan-European real estate investor and asset manager, in a joint venture with leading global private equity investment firm H.I.G. Capital (“H.I.G.”), announces that it has acquired a portfolio of 76 assets across Denmark from Danske Bank. M7 will act as asset manager through its Copenhagen based team which is headed by Mette Seifert.

The portfolio comprises a mix of retail, office and residential assets that are located on prominent high streets in the Greater Copenhagen area, as well as in key regional towns and cities throughout Denmark. The vendor occupies 58 of the properties through both its Danske Bank brand and subsidiary Home A/S, a nationwide Danish estate agency. Danske Bank is moving to a property leasing rather than real estate ownership model and has, therefore, entered into a range of new occupational leases as part of the transaction.

M7 has identified a range of opportunities to improve occupation levels and income across those properties not occupied by Danske Bank, through undertaking targeted refurbishment to help reduce the circa 10,000 sq m of currently vacant space and by negotiating lease regears with existing tenants.

Kromann Reumert and PwC provided legal and structuring advice, CBRE and Colliers provided commercial and valuation advice while COWI and Ambiente advised on technical and environmental issues for M7 and H.I.G.. Pareto acted as investment adviser alongside M7.

Robert V.S. Nellemann, Head of Strategic Property Asset Management at Danske Bank, said “This deal has helped the bank to achieve a key objective of bringing down the bank’s real estate exposure by moving to a property leasing model. We are very pleased to be working with H.I.G. and M7, to ensure we have the accommodation that we need to deliver at an operational level and maintain our focus on our customers”.

Richard Croft, Chief Executive at M7, commented: “Having entered into its first JV with H.I.G. in the Netherlands towards the end of 2013, M7 is very pleased to have expanded the relationship with this new Danish JV. The Danske Bank transaction has allowed M7 and H.I.G. to acquire, in a single transaction, a large number of high quality well located assets, which are either let to strong tenant covenants or offer significant upside through asset management. To this end, we intend to leverage M7’s pan-European experience, combined with the knowledge and expertise of our team in Copenhagen to create strong returns.”