According to the French daily newspaper Le Figaro , the sovereign fund of the emirate of Abu Dhabi is to sign the acquisition of a number of luxury properties throughout France. Concentrating mainly on apartments and commercial businesses in Paris and Lyon. In fact, last December the sovereign fund purchased part of the business Docks Lyonnais, owner of a remarkable real estate portfolio, that forms part of the bank UBS.
Amongst the recent purchases include a wonderful building destined to be rented out as offices at Boulevard Haussmann 6-8 in Paris, in the neighborhood that is home to the public investments bank (BPI, Banque Publique d’Investissment). Further purchases include a 65,000 sqm building near Nanterre and numerous commercial businesses in Lyon.
According to the daily newspaper, in economic terms this real estate procedure proves to be the most important carried out in the past few years.
The sovereign fund of the Arab emirates manages around 630 million dollars of assets and needs to vary its investments. There should be an interesting profit with the purchase of these luxury properties, between 4-6% is at low risk.
It should be noted that in 2010 the UBS bank started to sell their properties at a very reduced price in comparison to their actual market value. It is very probable that this is due to the need to have greater liquidity. Subsequently, the French real estate market is becoming more and more attractive for the Arab Emirates.
