Hannes Snellman acted as local counsel to Pradera, one of Europe's leading specialist retail property fund and asset managers, in the acquisition of 25 prime retail parks in eight European countries with an aggregate value of EUR 900 million. The parks, each located beside an IKEA store, have been sold to the Pradera European Retail Parks SCSp fund, which is backed by equity investments from private wealth partnership, LJ Partnership. LJ Partnership took a significant minority stake in the business in May 2016.

The portfolio of the retail parks situated next to the IKEA stores comprises around 500 units with a gross lettable area of around 538,000 sqm. Completion of the 17 assets located in Germany, France, and Poland is expected to take place on 4 April 2017, with a further eight retail parks in Sweden, Finland, Denmark, the Czech Republic, and Switzerland due to be completed on 31 August 2017.

Hannes Snellman advised Pradera and the lead counsel Gleiss Lutz on Finnish law, including transactional law and financing.

Our core team comprised Tapio Teräkivi, Maria Neovius, Antti Antikainen, Jussi Ahtola, and Ninja Heikkilä.