“It will be a company active in a number of industries, including real estate, but we are still considering options. Once we have more details we will make an announcement,” Slabbert said.
The company will have regional operations but Romania will be its core market, he added.
His resignation from this position with NEPI two weeks ago took the local real estate market by surprise, considering his contribution to the rise of the investment fund in the past few years, which now owns property like Mega Mall and Promenada Mall in Bucharest. Another executive that left NEPI two weeks ago was chief operating officer Victor Semionov. Semionov was the co-founder of NEPI along with Slabbert in 2007.
NEPI has since grown to assets of about EUR1.8 billion at the end of the first half, mostly in Romania, according to its latest report.
Being an entrepreneur is in his blood and he felt it was time to do something else, Slabbert says.
He told ZF in March he was planning to launch a new company together with NEPI and South Africa’s Resilient group, whose investments would focus on industrial and logistics sector and would start with a capital of EUR100 million.
The same month, the South African businessman sold 0.85% in NEPI on the Johannesburg stock market raising about EUR25 million. The sale was made to fund an industrial/logistics investment in Central Europe and establish a new real estate investment and development company together with NEPI.
Asked whether he still held stake in NEPI or whether he planned to sell some more of his shares, Slabbert would not comment. On December 31, 2014, Slabbert owned 2.2 million NEPI shares (1.8%), while Victor Semionov owned 1.4 million (0.5%).
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)