IC buys major stake in Arkadia

Ivanhoe Cambridge (IC) has strengthened its grip on the Warsaw retail market with a sizeable investment in the Arkadia shopping center. The Canadian property giant bought a 39.5-percent stake in European Retail Enterprises (ERE), the investor behind the retail center.

This puts it in partnership with American investment fund Simon Property Group in Europe, as the latter owns 34.7 percent of the shares in ERE. The remaining stake is still in the hands of ERE founders, the BEG Group, but in future the two players will even out their share division by buying shares from BEG.

The shares are thought to have been bought from the Peabody and Argo Group investment funds, which are managed by JP Morgan and the O'Connor Group. The value of the deal has not been revealed.

Arkadia is the largest shopping center in CEE and in its first year of business 17 million shoppers visited it. On average, 40,000 visitors come to Arkadia during the weekdays and 60,000 at the weekend.

However, this is not IC's only interest in the Warsaw retail market. During the summer it purchased a 65.52-percent stake in the Central European Retail Property Fund (CERPF), which owns the Wola Park shopping center. This brought the firm's holding to 91.52 percent in CERPF.