DLA Piper has been advising the global asset management company Blackstone on the acquisition of a logistics portfolio. The seller is the Austrian company Immofinanz. The total value of the portfolio is around 536 million euros.

The portfolio comprises 35 locations with roughly one million square metres of rentable floor space in 24 locations in Germany , five in Hungary, two in Romania, two in Poland, as well as one in Slovakia and Russia. Also part of the portfolio are eleven projects still to be finished, five of which are in Germany and Romania respectively, and one in Hungary.

Blackstone is a leading international investor in real estate. Founded in 1991, the real estate business of Blackstone manages assets worth 93 billion US dollars. This makes Blackstone the world’s largest administrator of property investments. The Blackstone portfolio comprises hotel, office, retail, industrial and residential properties in the USA, Europe and Asia, including the key holdings of Hilton Worldwide, Equity Office Properties and Brixmor shopping centres.

DLA Piper regularly advises Blackstone on large real estate transactions, most recently, for example, in June 2014 on the acquisition of a German-French logistics portfolio from Foncière des Régions as well as in September 2014 on a pan-European logistics portfolio from SEB Investment GmbH.

The German DLA Piper team advising on this transaction was led by the partners Dr Carsten Loll (Real Estate, Munich) and Dr Jan Schinköth (Corporate, Munich) and comprising the partners Dr Wolfram Distler (Finance & Projects, Frankfurt), Dr Jan Dreyer (Antitrust, Cologne), Dr Konrad Rohde (Tax, Frankfurt) and Pascal Kremp (Employment, Munich), counsel Dr Martin Haller (Real Estate, Munich), senior associate Sarah Oelsner, the associates Dr Manuel Indlekofer, Dr Britta Jilge, Eva Schuenemann (all Real Estate, Munich), Ma-ly Biehl (Employment, Munich), Dr Gregor Schroll (Antitrust, Cologne), Maren Beneke (Corporate, Cologne), Kristin Vogt (Corporate, Frankfurt) and Martin Wilmsen (Finance & Projects, Frankfurt) as well as the transaction lawyers Lisa Waizenhoefer and Monika Nierlich (both Real Estate, Munich).

In addition, the international DLA Piper team led by partner Joanne Owen (Real Estate, London) included the partners Alin Buftea (Real Estate, Bucharest), Jacek Gizinski (Real Estate, Warsaw), Sergey Koltchin (Real Estate, Moscow), Andras Posztl (Corporate, Budapest) and Michaela Stessl (Corporate, Bratislava).