Amundi completes first acquisition in Catalonia

Amundi Immobilier has completed the acquisition of an office on nº65 of Barcelona’s Sancho de Ávila street. The property was previously owned by Conren Tramway who are developing a new state of the art office building which is pre-let to co-working operator, Wojo, part of the Accor group. Amundi is understood to have paid over €56M for this acquisition.

Following the acquisition of Pioneer, Amundi is Europe’s largest asset manager with €1.425 trillion of assets under management (as at March 31, 2019) and ranks in the top 10 globally, according to IPE’s «Top 400 asset managers” published in June 2017.

Amundi entered the Spanish market through the acquisition of a hypermarket Sale & Leaseback initially signed with Credit Agricole in 2003 and 2004. This portfolio includes 5 Carrefour hypermarkets (in San Sebastian de los Reyes, Rincón de la Victoria, Alcalá de Henares, El Alisal) and last year Amundi completed its first office acquisition in Spain when it bought Madrid’s El Pórtico building from Union Investment for over €110 million.

In its first investment in Barcelona, ​​Amundi has chosen an 8,300m² office project that is still under construction which is scheduled for completion towards the end of 2019. The building was designed by architectural firm TAG Management and is arranged over ground and six upper floors with large floor plates of 1,200 square meters and flexibility for single or multi-tenant use. Two below ground floors provide parking for 96 cars, 31 motorcycles and 18 bicycles.

Tramway Capital, which is owned Jaime-Enrique and Paco Hugas created a partnership with German fund Conren Land and their first acquisition, in 2016, was Sancho de Avila 65, in Barcelona’s dynamic 22@ district. It will be Wojo’s first office in Spain and according to market sources, the tenant has agreed a rent of €22.3 per square meter per month.

SA65 is a modern, LEED Gold certified office building located in the heart of Barcelona’s 22@ district, one of the largest scale urban regeneration projects in Europe. The redevelopment of former industrial sites is giving way to a vibrant and dynamic new office district attracting major technology, services and creative economy companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, Cisco, Schibsted, Indra, T-Systems, WeWork, Ogilvy and Mediapro. The district is becoming one of the preferred office locations in Southern Europe to attract talented young professionals.

According to Paco Hugas, Partner of Conren Tramway «the leasing of this building has attracted some of the most important technological companies in the market due to the quality of the building and its magnificent location in the heart of the 22@ district». He added that they «hope to repeat the success of this deal with the letting of the other office projects they plan to begin shortly on Calle Pallars 180, Calle Badajoz 97 and Calle Almogàvers 160».

His brother and partner in Conren Tramway, Jaime Hugas, mentioned that «the purchase of Sancho de Avila, 65 by one of the three largest institutional investors in the world in a bilateral operation and off-market deal reaffirms that the 22@ district is already considered as Barcelona’s new prime business area»

Conren Tramway has received legal advice from Cuatrecasas whilst Wojo has been advised by JLL, M&B Abogados and Tetris. On the other side, Amundi has been advised by CBRE, DLA Piper, MACE and L’Étoile Properties Ibérica.