Czech Property Investments AS owner Radovan Vitek. Photographer: Vladimir Weiss/Bloomberg
Czech billionaire Radovan Vitek, the
biggest buyer of offices and retail buildings in the country
last year, said his investment company may spend more on real
estate in 2011 as competition for assets increases.
Vitek's Czech Property Investments AS purchased 14 Czech
properties for a total of 10 billion koruna ($580 million in
2010. That was about 45 percent of the value of all the
buildings that were bought and sold. CPI's purchases included
properties occupied by German engineering company Siemens AG (SIE and
Nestle SA (NESN, the world's largest food maker.
"Last year was a great time to buy: prices bottomed out
and foreigners were selling for no obvious reason," Vitek, 40,
said in an interview at CPI's headquarters in Prague. "Values
are now going up a little."
The prospect of a stronger economy has encouraged foreign
investors led by European Property Investors Special
Opportunities LP and CA Immobilien Anlagen AG to return to the
Czech market. Acquisitions worth a total of 556 million euros
($794 million were completed in the first quarter, about seven
times the year-earlier figure, DTZ Holdings Plc (DTZ said in an April
15 report.
"We expect prices to eventually bounce back and that will
curb our appetite," said Vitek. CPI aims to invest 30 billion
koruna to 45 billion koruna on properties over the next five
years, as long as they don't become too expensive, he said.
Vitek said he owns assets worth about 30 billion koruna
($1.8 billion.
Blanket Business
Vitek started his first venture, importing blankets from
Germany, as an economics student soon after the collapse of
communism in 1989. He set up a fund called Investicni
Privatizacni Fond Boleslavsko A.S. in 1991, then renamed the
company CPI in 1998 when it began to focus mainly on real-estate
investing.
By the end of 2010, CPI owned office buildings, hotels,
homes and land valued at 39.7 billion koruna, according to its
website. The company's 12,600 apartments make it the second-
largest provider of rented accommodation in the Czech Republic.
CPI and other investors may spend a total of 1.25 billion
euros to buy Czech properties this year, up from 700 million
euros in 2010, DTZ forecast in April.
European Property Investors Special Opportunities LP,
managed by AEW Europe, completed the biggest transaction of the
year in March when it bought an 80 percent stake in six
warehouse parks, valuing the properties at about 300 million
euros. CA Immo of Austria paid 272 million euros for Europolis,
the property investment unit of Oesterreichische Volksbanken AG.
'Less Risky'
"The economic prospects have improved and foreign
investors perceive the country as being less risky than its
regional peers," DTZ analyst Lenka Sindelarova said by
telephone. "Czech investors with CPI as a leader continue to be
active but are likely to face more competition from
international investors this year."
The total amount of money spent on real-estate acquisitions
in the Czech Republic fell by about 58 percent in 2009, when the
economy contracted 4.1 percent. In the first quarter of this
year, gross domestic product rose an annual 2.8 percent,
compared with 2.7 percent in the last three months of 2010, the
Prague-based Czech Statistics Office said June 9.
In May, CPI agreed to buy Czech retail parks from CA Immo
and Germany's Union Investment Real Estate for 96 million euros,
the company's biggest real-estate investment this year. Vitek
said he may bid for assets owned by ECM Real Investments AG, an
insolvent Czech developer, if they are offered for sale.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Lenka Ponikelska in Prague
lponikelska1@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story:
James M. Gomez at jagomez@bloomberg.net;
Andrew Blackman at ablackman@bloomberg.net.
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