Clifford Chance

Clifford Chance advises on the largest-ever office investment transaction in the Czech Republic

The Prague real estate team advised Aberdeen Asset Management Deutschland AG on the monumental sale of "The Park", the pre-eminent office park in Prague, to an affiliate of Starwood Capital Group. This constitutes the largest office investment transaction in the Czech Republic ever.

The office complex, built by developer AIG Lincoln, has 116,000 square metres of leasable area and ranks among the largest in the country. Among the companies which have offices at this premium address are Accenture, Dell, DHL, IBM, NIKE, Samsung and Sony.

This particularly sophisticated  transaction involved acting on behalf of three German open-ended funds selling a complex of 9 buildings vested in 5 limited liability and 4 limited partnerships. The challenge entailed not only the transfer of shares, but also changes in the structure of the sellers. It is worth mentioning that each of those vested companies, if sold individually, would represent a significant transaction on the Czech real estate market.

The process of the sale to Starwood Capital Group began at the end of 2012 and, despite the size, complexity and financing aspects of the deal, closed relatively quickly on 18 July 2013.