Brack Capital Real Estate Ltd., owned by Shimon Weintraub, is one of three finalists in the tender to buy the property portfolio of Germany's Landesentwicklungsgesellschaft NRW GmbH (LEG), owned by the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. If Brack Capital wins the tender, it will have to pay €3.4 billion for the portfolio of 93,000 rental apartments in the state.
North Rhine-Westphalia is Germany's wealthiest state, with 18 million residents, and accounts for 22% of Germany's total GDP. It includes the Ruhr and West Germany's former capital, Bonn. The state government has decided to privatize assets, including LEG, the state government's public housing arm.
Brack Capital has offices in Dusseldorf, where its representatives, Gal Tenenbaum and managing director Ofir Rahamim, are handling the company's bid for LEG. Brack Capital is headquartered in Amsterdam.
The " Financial Times Deutschland" reports that Deutschland Annington, owned by UK buyout firm Terra Firma, and Whitehall, controlled by Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) reached the second round in the tender, which closed a few days ago. The state government decided to close the sale of debt-laden LEG by the spring of 2008.
Brack Capital has declined to comment on the report.
Brack Capital was founded in 1992. The company was delisted from the TASE in 2005 after a successful offer to purchase by the controlling shareholders. The company owns properties in the US, Europe, Russia, China, and India. It has invested $7 billion to buy 2.8 million square meters of office, commercial and residential space. In Israel, it owns the building rights to the Marina Island in Herzliya.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on February 5, 2008
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