Karstadt flagship snapped up in €1.1bn deal

Berlin’s famous KaDeWe department store has been the venue for many a last-minute Christmas shopping dash. Now the store has itself been snapped up in time for Christmas as part of a €1.1bn sale at the end of what has been a buoyant year for German property deals.

The KaDeWe building and 16 other Karstadt department stores are to be sold by a consortium led by Whitehall, the Goldman Sachs property fund, to Signa, an Austrian investor.

The transaction, set to complete next year, is one of the biggest announced in Germany this year and shows how the eurozone’s largest economy remains a favoured destination for property investment.

This year is on track to rival 2011 as the busiest for German commercial property transactions since the financial crisis. Last year €23.5bn of property changed hands. This month Jones Lang LaSalle, the property consultancy, said Germany should see €22bn of deals this year and a similar amount in 2013.

Frank Pörschke, JLL’s chief executive in Germany, said: “Germany’s property market will remain a safe haven for investors for the foreseeable future.”

Mr Pörschke said investors were attracted by the comparatively high risk premium to be earned on property relative to low-yielding German bonds.

German property deals nevertheless remain at less than half the levels of 2006 and 2007, before the financial crisis.

Foreign investors have been involved in all of the biggest property deals in Germany this year. This month Lone Star, the US investor, bought a portfolio of almost 800 shops, offices and other commercial buildings in eastern Germany. The property had been in state hands since the country’s unification more than two decades ago.

Until the Signa deal was announced, office property had overtaken retail space this year as the favoured segment for investment, JLL said.

Germany’s economy has remained relatively stable compared with most other eurozone markets during the financial and sovereign debt crisis. Residential property prices and rents are also beginning to rise after years of stagnation – in some cities at rates that have caused the Bundesbank and other observers to warn that a property bubble may be developing.

KaDeWe is the flagship branch of Karstadt, the department store chain, which was part of Arcandor’s insolvency in 2009 before being bought by Nicolas Berggruen, the US-based financial investor.

Most of Karstadt’s stores had previously been sold to the Whitehall-led consortium, called HighStreet, which reached a compromise on rents paid by Karstadt to allow Mr Berggruen’s takeover. The group’s other investors include Deutsche Bank’s Rreef fund; Generali, the Italian insurer; Prelios, the Italian fund manager; and Italy’s Borletti Group.