The purchase of 60 supermarkets and ten retail parks of the Vendo brand in the Czech Republic and Slovakia from the German Trei Real Estate cost the Prague investment group Plan B Investments (PBI) roughly a quarter of a billion euros, or approximately six billion crowns. The retail property portfolio has a total area of around 122,000 square meters and most of the supermarkets are leased by Penny and Bill’s grocery chains.
The PBI company of investors Zdenek Šoustal and Josef Malíř stated this in a press release. The transaction was approved by the Office for the Protection of Economic Competition last December.
According to PBI, the transaction was invested by Czech investors – investment group SPM, Moravec Invest, DIBITI and Reticulum. PBI was the deal manager and will manage the portfolio.
“Today, I consider it unique to make a real estate transaction for around a quarter of a billion euros. We managed to get a portfolio from an international developer at a time when financing is scarce and becoming more expensive, the exchange rate of the koruna to the euro is not stable and the real estate market is overstepping,” said Šoustal, who is the 17th richest Czech according to last year’s ranking by Forbes magazine.
The painter stated that the structure of the portfolio guarantees its profitability even in the event of an economic downturn. The quality of the properties and the financial strength of the main tenants ensure the stability of the investment, he added.
Plan B Investments is an investment group founded by Malíř from Star Capital Finance and Šoustal from Reticulum. It focuses on real estate investments, especially in Central and Eastern Europe. It also owns and manages office buildings, partly also industrial ones.
The German development company Trei Real Estate from the Tengelmann real estate group has been active on the Czech market since 2008. By selling domestic real estate, it followed the same step in Portugal, thereby trying to strategically optimize its portfolio. CEO Pepijn Morshuis said that the company is now focusing on developing residential projects in its three key markets, which are Germany, the United States of America and Poland.
