Dutch Group Corio Mulling Interest In Bulgaria

Dutch property group Corio is mulling potential acquisitions, including in Romania and Bulgaria. While some of its competitor companies have been affected by the global credit crunch, Corio, on the other hand, is still in a position to raise an expected 3 billion euro through bond emissions and the sale of some of its assets, the company’s CEO Jan de Kreij told Reuters, as quoted by investor.bg.

The funds might be raised within the next five years and poured into construction or acquisition of real estate, Corio’s executive added.
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Corio is focused on Spain, Italy and Turkey, and possibly a new developing market in East Europe like Bulgaria or Romania.

“We have noticed that some of the major players, particularly in Spain, find difficulty in securing finance, which, hopefully, would provide us investment opportunities,” de Kreij said.

The Dutch company, which operates a 6.5 billion euro property portfolio in Europe, is currently in the process of selling a significant pie of its office and industrial space portfolio, amounting to 1.1 billion euro, because it prefers to focus on commercial properties, due to the stable cash flows that they traditionally generate.

Corio ranks 13th in PropertyEU magazine’s ranking of the world’s largest construction entrepreneurs in Europe.

Spanish company Colonial, which is in negotiations with Investment Corporation of Dubai (ICD), has an attractive real estate portfolio, de Kreij noted. However, Corio is not interested in the assets of the Dutch VastNed Retail, which has already extended invitations to potential candidates to buy out either chunks of the company or the whole entity.

VastNed Retail is a listed property fund primarily invested in retail properties on good and top locations in the Eurozone. The portfolio consists of almost 560 properties with an average value of 3.3 million euro. VastNed Retail is active in six countries in four countries and where it lets its properties to a large number of well-known retail chains.propertywisebulgaria.com