Most giants on the Romanian real estate market are foreign-held, and the top real estate developer is South Africa’s NEPI, which owns Promenada and Mega Mall shopping centers in the country, among others. NEPI was also involved in one of the biggest deals last year, when it bought Shopping City Sibiu mall from UK’s Argo Real Estate for EUR100 million.
With an almost EUR2 billion portfolio of retail and office space assets, NEPI retained its lead among developers in 2016, increasing its portfolio by EUR2 million on 2015.
Another major developer is Globalworth, of Greek businessman Ioannis Papalekas, which ended last year with a EUR977.5 million portfolio in Romania. When the projects Globalworth is planning are completed, such as the second phase of the Globalworth Campus, its portfolio will increase by EUR115 million, which means it will own EUR1.1 billion real estate assets. Globalworth owns mostly office space buildings and some residential properties, unlike NEPI.
The top developers also include Austria’s Immofinanz, CA Immo, S Immo, Israel’s AFI Europe, Sweden’s Skanska and Turkey’s Anchor Grup, the developers of the first mall in Romania, Bucuresti Mall.
The merger announced last year and yet to be finalized of Immofinanz and CA Immo will create a new major real estate business. Their portfolios currently amount to EUR1.1 billion together, equal to Globalworth’s once the projects it is working on have been delivered.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)