Peakside, a specialist European real estate private equity firm, plans to launch a new opportunity fund targeting Germany and the surrounding Central and Eastern Europe countries. Peakside partners Boris Schran and Stefan Aumann told PropertyEU at Expo Real that they hoped to raise some EUR 400 mln of equity for the fund, with 60-65% leverage.
The target for internal rate of return (IRR) would be in the mid-teens to 20%, Aumann said.
Peakside is considering going to the market to raise the fund at the beginning of 2012. Aumann and Scran said that Peakside has carried out a series of disposals this year for its current pan-European fund, Peakside Real Estate Fund 1, that focuses on Germany and CEE.
About EUR 60-80 mln of small to medium-sized assets have been sold since the start of the year. The company was established in 2010 by Roger Barris, Aumann, Schran and Mark Fenchelle, former senior managers of the European real estate team within Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Peakside acquired management control of Merrill Lynch’s key European property funds and portfolio of assets in September 2010. The main part of the deal involved the Merrill Lynch European Real Estate Opportunity Fund (MLEREOF) which was renamed Peakside Real Estate Fund I.
PropertyEU filed 70 news stories, published three Daily News magazines and conducted 15 PropertyTV interviews from Expo Real. Click on the link below for the full overview. | 
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