December 18 (SeeNews) - Austrian real estate company Supernova said it has competed the 220 million euro ($244 million) takeover of ten Qlandia shopping malls in Slovenia from Centrice Real Estate GmbH, a company owned by US private equity fund manager Lone Star.
The transaction is financed by a combination of own funds and lending from several international and local banks, Supernova said in a statement on its website.
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"We are delighted at this further milestone and after the physical handover in the next few days we will commence the integration of the centres into the Supernova network," Jakob Eichberger, the head of centre management at m2 Group, which manages the centres for Supernova, said in the statement.
This is Supernova's second acquisition in Slovenia in 2019. Earlier this year, Slovenian retailer Mercator completed the sale of ten shopping centres to the Austrian group for 116.6 million euro.
The Slovenian projects in Supernova's portfolio now comprise 30%, while the annual rent the Supernova group of companies collect in the country will go beyond 100 million euro, the statement said.
"Slovenia had always been a very successful core market for the group; this transaction has secured the group’s market leadership in the country in the long term," the statement added.
The Qlandia shopping malls hosts tenants such as Interspar, dm, Müller Drogerie, Deichmann, Humanic, H&M, Hervis and McDonalds, among others.
Centrice acquired the Qlandia portfolio back in 2016 from Austria's HETA Asset Resolution, the 'bad bank' of former Hypo Alpe Adria International.
Founded in 1994, Supernova is headquartered in Graz and has offices in Vienna, Ljubljana, Zagreb, Bratislava and Belgrade. The group has been focused on developing and investing in real estate.
($=0.8998 euro)