Ardian buys an office building in Madrid for over €50M

Ardian has paid BNP Paribas close to €60 million euros for an asset located on Calle Retama nº3 in Madrid’s Méndez Álvaro area. The office was partially leased to Cetelem and Unión de Créditos Inmobiliarios and represents Ardian‘s first value-added transaction in Spain.

The French fund plans to carry out a thorough refurbishment of the 13,200m2 property adapting it to suit a wider variety of tenants and improving its sustainability criteria. The complex, which was built in 1993 and refurbished during 2008, includes 225 parking spaces.

According to Edmund Eggins, director of Ardian, «the purchase of this building reinforces [Ardian‘s] commitment to Spain. It represents a unique opportunity to acquire an obvious asset within the M-30, in a location with high development potential and with the opportunity to actively manage the property to turn it into a building of the future.»

Rodolfo Petrosino, head of Asset Management for Southern Europe has mentioned that «the Ardian Real Estate team in Spain has been working these last months analyzing many opportunities, and today we can say that we have closed a great deal together with BNP Paribas. For us, Spain, and specifically Madrid and Barcelona, continues to be a very interesting market, and we expect to continue to grow our portfolio of assets in the coming months».

Ardian‘s first acquisition in Spain was the purchase of a 10,000 square meter building leased to the Tax Agency in the Nuevos Ministerios area. It intends to invest €250 million in Madrid and Barcelona and currently has €2.2 billion in assets under management with over 300,000 sqm in Paris, Milan, Rome, Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin and Madrid.

The Mendez Álvaro area is located within Madrid’s M-30 (past Atocha). From an office perspective, it is considered the natural extension of Madrid’s CBD as it has direct access via the Recoletos-Castellana Hub, Madrid’s main office area. Currently, companies such as Repsol, Mahou, Amazon, Ericsson and Catalana Occidente have installed their HQs in Mendez Alvaro which has an extremely low availability rate (of only 3%), well below the 5% of the «Zona Centro of Madrid», (to which it belongs), and Madrid’s average rate of 10%.

When looking for a potential tenant, Ardian will compete with Colonial’s Campus megaproject, which will add around 90,000 sqm to the Mendez Alvaro area. Ardian will also compete with other projects such as Acciona’s repositioning project, transforming a warehouse into a highly efficient office on Calle Ombú, or GMP’s potential development of 18,000 sqm of office space in front of Repsol‘s headquarters. Currently, Mendez Alvaro has average rents for new/very good condition products at around €21-22/sqm, but with expectations to begin advancing to €25-26 in some prime new buildings.

Furthermore, Mendez Alvaro has experienced high investor interest in recent years, as can be seen by the large pipeline that exists in the area. Grosvenor Europe has also bet on the area, in Calle Titán, with the acquisition of a 10,600 sqm building (Titan 8) (leased to Enegas) in Q4 2020 for €60M (€5,600/sqm) at a yield in the region of 4%.

Ardian has been advised by Savills Aguirre Newman and EY Abogados, while BNP Paribas REIM has been advised by BNP Paribas Real Estate, Pérez Llorca and Gleeds.