Corpus Sireo — Germany’s largest real estate management business — is being offered for sale by its three savings bank owners. Lazards has been appointed to oversee the disposal and has hinted at a starting price of more than €300m [£247m].
With a property portfolio exceeding €15.6bn [£12.8bn], Corpus Sireo is jointly owned by Sparkasse KölnBonn, which has a half share, and Stadtsparkasse Düsseldorf and Frankfurter Sparkasse, with a quarter share each. Its sale is seen as a consequence of the continued consolidation of German’s asset management markets.
Norbert Minwegen is spokesman for Sparkasse Köln-Bonn. “Corpus Sireo has developed from a classic regional business into an international one,” he explained. “There is currently a good market for real estate, and so we reckoned it might also be a good time to sell off shares in a real estate company.” Minwegen stressed, however, that none of the current owners was “under any rush to sell” and that the process of a possible sale was “just testing the waters”.
Three types of buyers are expected to be interested in acquiring Corpus Sireo, whose sale has been dubbed Project Venus: international strategic buyers, international financial buyers and domestic competitors. Wisag, Johnson Controls, CR Investment Management, CBRE and JLL are all thought to be considering bids.
Corpus Sireo’s core services to Germany’s real estate market include asset and investment management, residential project development and investment brokerage services. It also owns a 3,600-strong residential real estate portfolio which is part of separate disposal process called, Project Merkur.
Headquartered in Cologne, Corpus Sireo, employs 525 people across 11 German offices and one in Luxembourg. Eighty-eight per cent of the company’s assets, around €13.7bn [£11.3bn] are held within the asset management unit. Of these, €10.4bn [£8.5bn] or 76 per cent, are commercial real estate properties. In addition €1.6bn [£1.3bn], around 10 per cent, is managed through fund structures, a market which continues to fragment and one likely to experience further consolidations. Finally, Corpus Sireo has around €400m [£329m], or two per cent, in prime residential project developments in cities including Cologne, Düsseldorf, Munich and Frankfurt.
In May, 2012, it was appointed as asset manager on the “Hawk” portfolio by Cerberus Capital Management after the global private equity firm won the purchase of bankrupt Speymill Deutsche Immobilien Company’s 22,000-strong German multi-family portfolio. Five months later Corpus Sireo secured a five-year mandate covering asset management, sales and acquisitions for the residential portfolio of the €500m [£411m] RREEF Property Pension Fund.
Earlier this year Corpus Sireo outlined its ambitions to develop a German retail real estate asset management business unit. Most analysts feel these plans can still be realised under new ownership through leveraging its existing market reputation aided by senior hires.
Corpus started off as a regional player in 1995, but the portfolio quickly expanded, beginning with an exclusive 2001 deal to manage the properties of Deutsche Telekom. In 2007, the company merged with Sireo real estate, taking control of several US properties.
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