In 2021, for the second edition of our GMO event series, we invited panellists to discuss how COVID-19 has acted as a catalyst for changes already afoot in the retail real estate industry

More than 200 participants joined our moderator David O’Meara from Greenman and the panel of experts in an open discussion on the market insights, trends and challenges of the retail and real estate market.

Panellists

• Bobby Healy, CEO & Founder, Manna
• Sandra Ludwig, Managing Director, Grossmann & Berger
• Angelus Bernreuther, Zentralbereiche, Kaufland
• Matthew Thompson, Head of Retail Strategy, Colliers International UK
• David Farquhar, CEO, Intelligent Growth Solutions

Greenman OPEN’s Q3 Performance webinar was held on Thursday 5 November.

Key takeaways:

– Greenman OPEN’s asset class market share has increased as investors search for the stability food retailers offer.

– Foreign investment has increased by 14% y-on-y underlining their confidence in Germany’s security & stability.

– Retail remains open under new Covid-19 restrictions in Germany. Coupled with additional VAT cuts to stimulate spending.

– CFO underlines target to achieve half a billion NAV by end of year and CEO discusses possibility of drone delivery trial with Manna in the new year.

Panellists
Johnnie Wilkinson
David O’Meara
Michael Barry
James McEvoy
Catherine Choo

John Wilkinson, CEO, Greenman, talks to The Real Estate Day at Expo Real 2019 about how Greenman OPEN, as a buy and hold fund, believe they can generate income for their investors by focusing on micro-locations across the country, as German food retailers are financially strong and online shopping in this sector has not yet taken off.

Germany’s open-ended retail real estate funds saw record inflows in 2019 as the gap widened on the spreads between government bond yields and returns from the property market, as new data published by Berlin-based rating agency Scope shows.

As a comparison, the average yield on 14 open-ended mutual real estate funds over the past 15 years has always shown a positive differential, or premium, over German government bonds, with this spread, or “excess return” only widening since 2013. Net inflows in 2019 were only exceeded in 2009 and 2016.

As Frank Netscher, analyst at Scope, puts it: “The 3.8 percentage-point spread between yields on open-ended real estate funds and German government bonds has very rarely been so wide. “On the one hand, yields on government bonds have fallen steadily, with the yield on 10-year German bonds in negative territory for much of 2019. On the other hand, yields on open-ended real estate funds have also risen steadily, driven primarily by increases in the value of properties in fund managers’ portfolios.” Read more here in ReFire:

https://www.refire-online.com/markets/record-inflows-into-german-open-ended-funds-as-yield-spreads-widen/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=linkedin

It was wonderful to celebrate the opening of our new office with so many business partners, investors, colleagues and friends who have been part of and helped Greenman over the past few years. Having outgrown our last office, the new space in Berlin set over three floors, provides us with ample room to expand into as we continue to grow.

A special thank you to his excellency, Ambassador Nicholas O’Brien for speaking at the reception and to our friends at Lough Ree Distillery for bringing their Slingshot Irish Gin to the event for us to try.