Union Investment expands property portfolio in Switzerland (DE/CH)

Union Investment expands property portfolio in Switzerland (DE/CH) Friday 29 May 2009
Union Investment Real Estate AG continues to invest actively in the European core markets. The Hamburg-based investment management company has acquired the 26,900-m² West-Park office building in Zurich on behalf of its UniImmo: global open-ended real estate for some €104.3 million. The vendor is West-Park Zürich AG.
The 26,900-m² West-Park office building in Zurich. Built in 2002, the property has an occupancy rate of 94% based on rental income. The principal tenants are Schweizerische Post, Barry Callebaut, a manufacturer of cocoa and chocolate, and management consultancy BearingPoint. All these organizations have good to excellent credit ratings. West-Park is situated in a downtown location in the up-and-coming submarket of Zurich-West. “With its substantial blocks of modern, contiguous office space, Zurich-West is extremely well positioned and has good reletting prospects,” says Dr. Karl-Joseph Hermanns-Engel, a member of the Management Board of Union Investment Real Estate AG. Union Investment has had a presence in Zurich-West, the city’s main development zone, since September 2008, when it purchased the “CityWest Gebäude F” office development for sister fund UniImmo: Europa. By entering the Swiss market, UniImmo: Global has added a further European core market to its holdings. With total property assets of approximately €2.4 billion at present, the fund is broadly diversified across 14 national markets in Europe, the Americas and Asia. Source: Union Investment Real Estate AG