DLA Piper has advised Barings Real Estate Advisers, part of Barings LLC, one of the world’s largest diversified real estate investment managers on the acquisition of a fully let Grade A office building in Berlin "Mitte" from Westbrook Partners.

The 18,900 sq m office building at the corner of Chausseestrasse 23 and Zinnowitzer Strasse is fully let on a long term lease to Vattenfall GmbH, a Swedish state owned energy company with around 20,000 employees. The building is profiting from a continuing positive development in the direct neighbourhood.

Gunther Deutsch, Head of Transactions Europe at Barings Real Estate Advisers, said: “We are pleased to have secured this asset in the heart of Berlin for one of our European Core investment strategies. This transaction is the eighth acquisition in the last 15 months for this European Investment strategy and we are looking for additional products across our jurisdictions Germany, Sweden, Finland, Italy, France, Spain and the UK. The acquisition is also a strong example of the ability of our European platform to source product and complete transactions that match the criteria of our various investment strategies”.

The DLA Piper team was lead from Luxembourg by Finance partner, Xavier Guzman, and supported by Isabelle Bertels and Catherine Pogorzelski from Corporate, with tax support from Geoffrey Scardoni. In Germany, Barings were advised by Fabian Muehlen and Moritz Mursa from the Real Estate practice and Claus Jochimsen-von Gfug and Christoph Imschweiler for Tax.

Xavier Guzman, partner in DLA Piper's Finance practice, commented that " It was a great honour to work on such a significant transaction for Barings. It is another excellent demonstration of DLA Piper's capabilities in handling cross-border real estate transactions."