Bouwinvest Retail Fund attracts three Dutch pension funds with € 55 million total commitment

Bouwinvest Dutch Institutional Retail Fund (Bouwinvest Retail Fund) has attracted its first third-party investment after three Dutch pension funds committed a total of € 55 million at the beginning of the year to join the fund’s largest investor, bpfBOUW.

The new investors are Pf Grontmij, Pf Fysiotherapeuten and Pf PNO Media, all of which were advised by Grontmij Capital Consultants.

Bouwinvest CEO Dick van Hal said “This is a great start of the year for the Fund, which focuses on locations in the Dutch market that are best placed to prosper as e-commerce polarises retailing. We see good opportunities for investing in assets that meet our ‘convenience’ and ‘experience’ investment focus. We expect such investments to deliver superior returns through careful asset selection and redevelopment know-how.”

The Bouwinvest Retail Fund targets stable, long-term core returns from properties located in prime high street locations and neighbourhood shopping centres in the Netherlands – its so-called “experience and convenience” strategy.

The Fund owns 41 high-quality assets recently valued at € 723 million. These include three shopping centre developments in Amsterdam at Mosveld, Stadionplein and the flagship Damrak project, all of which are scheduled to open later this year. Bouwinvest aims to enlarge the fund to € 800 million of assets by the end of 2017.

Bouwinvest Retail Fund has outperformed the IPD Dutch Property Index since 2011, generating average annual returns of 6.4% compared with a 4.5% average return for the benchmark.