Axa Real Estate Investment Managers raised over €1.5bn ($1.7bn) at the first closing of its most recent pan-European real estate debt fund, called Commercial Real Estate (CRE) Senior 9. The company is hoping to take the final total for the fund to €2.5bn, primarily from insurance companies and pension funds, and said that this would make it the largest European CRE senior loan fund in the market.
The fund is Axa Real Estate's fourth co-mingled real estate debt fund targeting European third-party institutional investors. The commitments for CRE Senior 9 were received from eleven institutional investors from the UK, the Netherlands, France and Switzerland, comprising nine third-party clients and two Axa insurance companies.
The company added that it had created a new structure for CRE Senior 9 which allows capital to be recycled back into the fund once loans have matured, thus allowing investors to retain their investment. In addition to this and in order to access demand from German investors, a specific feeder fund issuing rated notes has been set up, which will allow German regulated investors to participate in a further closing expected in the first quarter of 2015.
The fund raising brings the total commitments received by Axa Real Estate for its debt platform in 2014 to €3.7bn and takes the total platform to around €10bn.
Axa Real Estate is also reported to be in talks to revive one of London's stalled construction projects, the Pinnacle. According to the Financial Times, Axa Real Estate, developer Lipton Rogers and an unnamed Asian investor are planning to sign a deal to buy the site from its present owners, a Middle Eastern consortium of investors. The Pinnacle was started in 2006 and was planned to be one of London's tallest buildings. However, the global financial crisis intervened, stopping work on the project with just the foundations and the bottom of the lift core having been built and the site has been inactive since 2012.
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