Meridian Capital Investor appetite remains. Real estate venture capital firm founded by Catalan businessman Javier Faus closed Purchase of an industrial building in the thriving Barcelona neighborhood of 22@. Through the Meridia RE IV fund listed on Euronext Access Paris (similar to BME Growth in Spain), it purchased property 86, Calle Pere IV, the tenth purchase of the investment vehicle.
Javier Faus and shareholders paid 9.2 million € for the real estate whose price was paid with a capital increase of TL 9.4 million. Before the investment in the restructuring went public, Meridia paid 2,752 euros per square meter built.
The current property has 3,343 m2 of industrial use, spread over three floors, built on a plot of 1,130 m2. The ground floor is 1,115 square meters, an area similar to the first and second floors of 950 and 940 respectively; the third is the smallest, 338 meters. The purpose of the mutual fund is transforming it into a modern and up-to-date office buildingin an area where demand for workspaces is high.
Who is Meridia Capital?
Investment manager, founded until a few months ago by the President of the Círculo de Economía, € 1 billion in assets under management. It is structured into various sections: one for private equity, another for venture capital, plus a real estate investment fund manager, with another recently added for ‘glamping’ (luxury campsites).
The protagonist of this operation, the Meridia RE IV fund, is a vehicle with a capital of 250 million euros and Leveraged investment capacity of more than 500 million euros. Founded in 2019, its chairman and CEO, Javier Faus, entered the stock market in July 2021, complying with the Socimi (Real Estate Investment Companies) regime. This corporate formula has the advantage of not paying corporate taxes, but its obligations include being listed on the stock exchange and distributing 80% of its profits as dividends.
According to the Merdidia RE IV corporate website, It has nine assets: Three office buildings in Madrid and three more in Barcelona, a hotel in Barcelona, an industrial logistics presence in Barbera de Vallés and three campsites on the Costa Brava, Cabo de Gata and Cala Montgó. It has made only two sales since going public: two buildings in Madrid where it went for 20 million and a 23,000 square foot warehouse in Gelida (Barcelona). Until the third quarter of 2022, Committed investments worth 196 million. Between January and September, the fund recorded revenues of 3.27 million and profits of over 20 million due to significant revaluation of its assets.
Barcelona’s 22″ fashion district
22@ is an urban renewal project supported by the Barcelona City Council in 2000. This development included the recycling of industrial areas in the Poblenou neighbourhood, which is more than 200 hectares of land. In recent years, It has become the most in-demand place to rent offices in Barcelona.. According to the website of the Ada Colau-led Consistory, there are currently “more than 1,500 companies involved in media, information technology, energy, design and scientific research.”
According to the latest report of the real estate consultancy company Savills on the office market, the availability of offices is 18% of existing offices. this region Concentrates on 50% of all square meters of offices built or rehabilitated in Barcelona. One of the most important operations that closed in this space in 2022 was the acquisition of GMP, a company owned by the Montoro Alemán family and the Singapore GIC sovereign wealth fund. This Socimi paid Freo 220 million euros for a new building that will become Glovo’s new headquarters.