Realcast: Satellite’s wider orbit, ‘living’ preferred, online takes a breather, events get personal

In the spotlight this week:

The UK’s first satellite launch last week may have failed but it did serve to highlight the growing focus on space and satellite technology as part of the advanced manufacturing sector, as highlighted previously be Real Asset Media, particularly in our recent Investment Briefings on Scotland

The “living assets” segment of the real estate market has been prominent, including: news of HIH Invest Real Estate acquiring a residential portfolio in Germany from Quarterback Immobilien; ECE buying an asset in Copenhagen for its ECE Better Living Europe fund; Patron, Bluestone and FREO extending their activities in Milan; and M&G raising about €578 million for a new European residential property fund.

But other sectors have been active too and in the Netherlands King Street Capital Management sold a 25,000 sq m sustainable office building in Hoofdorp.

Meanwhile, after dramatic expansion of the online sector during the Covid 19 pandemic, Amazon is pausing some of the rollouts of their Amazon Fresh supermarkets and closing warehouses putting about 1,200 UK jobs at risk. However, it simultaneously announced two new centres including a new warehouse in East Yorkshire.

Asos is also reported to be planning to reduce office space and close warehouses. Nevertheless, investment into logistics remains buoyant and Co-Star have reported that the UK industrial and logistics market saw another strong year of occupier demand in 2022 with 32.4 million sq ft of logistics take up. Investment manager L&G is taking advantage of the buoyant market to sell its Fradley Park asset in Lichfield, UK, to raise cash to meet redemptions. Meanwhile, the so-called “denominator effect” is taking its toll on portfolios.

Real Asset Media has launched the events that it will be staging at MIPIM in Cannes in March as part of the official partner program. We will be focusing on living, logistics, debt, ESG and opportunities in Europe among other topics.

In-person events are definitely making a comeback and last week CMS EPRA Outlook 2023 event was staged in London, providing an interesting CEO panel with all but one of the panel members expecting to be a net buyer in 2023.

Click on the video to see the full discussion or listen to the podcast below.

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