“We are delighted to have completed this acquisition with both our long standing partner and investor Varma and our new partner Cavendo, who will take responsibility for asset management at the centre. With all of the opportunities it presents, Heron City is a great fit with our value-add strategy,” comments Ed Williams, Senior Partner at CapMan Real Estate.

Kungens Kurva is 15 minutes South of Stockholm’s city centre and is the busiest retail area in the Nordics with approximately 20 million visitors a year. The area is anchored by the largest IKEA store in the world and the catchment area includes 1.5 million people within a 30-minute drive.

Heron City’s main tenants include Sweden’s largest cinema operated by SF Bio, home electronics retailer Media Markt, interior design and furniture retailer Mio, Willys supermarket and sports & outdoor retailer XXL. With a distinct retail and leisure offering, Heron City complements the other retail centres in the area and has benefited from increasing visitor numbers and turnover as Kungens Kurva has expanded in recent years. Visitors to Heron City in 2015 amounted to 7.2 million. The property will benefit from significantly improved accessibility and catchment area over the coming years with the completion of the Stockholm bypass infrastructure project.

“Varma is one of the leading real estate investors in Finland but has been actively pursuing opportunities to expand our international diversification recently. With the excellent and continually improving retail dynamics in the Kungens Kurva area, we are excited to be increasing our retail exposure to Southern Stockholm. Working together with CapMan and Cavendo we aim to make this transaction a success”, says Ilkka Tomperi, Varma’s investment director in charge of real estate investments.

“We are very proud to form this partnership with Varma and CapMan. Heron City is a property with strong fundamentals, which at the same time offers value-add opportunities through active asset management, which fits perfectly with Cavendo’s investment philosophy. We look forward to realising Heron City’s full potential together with our partners,” says Joakim Karlsson, Managing Director at Cavendo.

“Real estate suits well into our wider investment portfolio and our recent international investments across Western Europe have performed well benefiting from the good underlying fundamentals of many of these growing markets,” comments Ilkka Tomperi.

The sellers advisor was CBRE.