The Carlyle Group has sold a property in central Stockholm to Kjell Ericsson & Partner Fastighetsförädling AB.

Orchard Street Investment Management LLP has acquired a UK shopping centre for £22.25 million (€25.0 million) from RREEF.

LaSalle Investment Management KAG has acquired a 5,800-square-metre commercial property in the city centre of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, on behalf of one of its specialist investment funds.

Corestate Group, through a joint venture partnership, has acquired a portfolio of 153 residential assets in Germany comprising more than 2,100 units.

The CB Richard Ellis Investors Pan-European Core Fund, a core open-end fund sponsored by CB Richard Ellis Investors, has acquired a business park in France from a private investor.

You’d be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn’t agree that a single set of standardised international financial reporting standards is — in theory — a good thing. Why wouldn’t investors want to be able to quickly compare the financial reports of investments made in Germany, Brazil and the United States? As always, however, the devil is in the detail. Whose standards should be adopted? What types of companies should be required to use them, and which ones should simply be encouraged or permitted? What are some of the unintended consequences of standardisation? And, most importantly, how does it all affect institutional real estate investing?

AXA Real Estate Investment Managers (REIM) has completed a second close of its Commercial Real Estate Senior 1 (CRE1) fund.

AXA Real Estate Investment Managers (REIM) has acquired a 5,000-square-metre office building in Rome from iii-European Property Fund.

There are striking similarities between the situation in the bond markets two years ago, as the global economy passed the nadir of the financial crisis, and the European real estate investment market today, and this might foreshadow a similar market outcome that will start to develop in the coming months. Two major emerging challenges for investors — in the form of tougher market regulation and possibly rising inflation — are, however, likely to interact very differently with the property and fixed income asset classes.

As a result of the large number of critical responses received to the Exposure Draft that was released in August 2010, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) has made some significant amendments to its proposed new lease accounting standard.

When a British property analyst was asked to give a market forecast in a German panel discussion in spring 2009, he was astonished. “Crisis? What crisis? There is no crisis in Germany,” he explained, shaking his head in disbelief. Hardly surprising. At that time, London’s property market was on a rollercoaster ride and affected by falling rent levels and high vacancy rates, whereas in Chancellor Merkel’s Germany everything seemed to be as normal.

Until recently, liquidity has not been a major focus, but the global financial crisis has led to an increased awareness of illiquidity issues. Highlighted as the “number one surprise” of the downturn by participants at the 2011 INREV Conference in Venice, liquidity is likely to be increasingly important in the future. Moreover, the longer-term impact of the move from defined benefit provision to defined contribution in many pension schemes has also increased the focus on liquidity requirements in real estate allocations. Expanding the toolkit used by investors to include listed property funds within their overall non-listed portfolio might address some of these issues while simultaneously providing more attractive risk-adjusted returns.

Significant change has swept the commercial real estate sector in recent years. Over time, larger volumes of capital from a variety of institutional sources have moved into the industry, and real estate truly emerged as an acceptable risk-managed asset class. Investors and investment managers need transparency to understand their risks and their portfolios. To address these challenges, RealFoundations has developed a real estate investment information model (RIIM*) that consists of seven key components.

Rockspring Property Investment Managers, a London-based fund manager, has made a number of recent acquisitions in Germany and Spain.