Quinlan Private property fund raises €725m

QUINLAN PRIVATE, the investment firm founded by financier Derek Quinlan, has raised €725 million from a combination of Irish, UK and US investors to purchase European property.

The fund raised €325 million from Irish and UK clients and €400 million from US investors.

The amount raised in the US exceeded the company's expectations. The firm declined to provide a breakdown of the remaining investment between the Republic and the UK.

Quinlan Private said the US investors included endowments, life companies and other leading institutional investors as well as high-net-worth individuals. This is the first time the investment fund raised capital from US investors.

Quinlan Private has been raising equity capital in the US roughly for the past 12 months - a particularly difficult period in the investment markets.

The Dublin-based company said the equity capital investment in the fund, including debt, had reached €2.5 billion and that the fund was now closed. Roughly half of this sum had already been invested, a spokesman said, adding that the remainder would be invested by the end of the year.

The fund has already made "significant" retail investments in Bulgaria and Slovakia, and in office units in the Netherlands, the UK and Germany.

It is involved in office development projects in the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia and hotel and leisure investments in the UK and across central and eastern Europe.

Quinlan is expected to react to the downturn in western European property by focusing up to 70 per cent of its activity on central and eastern Europe.

Much of the investment group's activity in this region to date has gone into buying development land, which will be developed by Quinlan Private Golub, the group's joint venture with Golub & Co of the US. Quinlan Private Golub has developments worth more than €2 billion under construction, the largest being the €1.5 billion South City suburb in Bratislava, Slovakia.

Quinlan Private was a major investor behind the purchase last year of a chain of budget hotels owned by Jurys Doyle Hotel Group for €1.16 billion. The group plans to open about 50 Jurys Inn hotels in central and eastern Europe.

In a statement, Mr Quinlan, chairman of Quinlan Private, said the current fund would provide investors with an opportunity to invest in those European markets in which the company had expertise and almost 20 years' experience.

Quinlan Private has more than €11.5 billion in assets under management, including hotels, shopping centres and office blocks.

Over the past five years, the company has bought numerous UK properties, including the Connaught, Savoy and Claridge's hotels in London.