Qatar spent a whopping $4.3 billion – about six weeks of its natural gas revenue – on European property in the past 12 months, making it the continent’s top sovereign investor, a research firm has said.
The country came second only to private equity group Blackstone, which spent $4.5 billion, as Europe’s largest buyer this year, research from Real Capital Analytics found.
Since last August, Qatar has poured its money into eight key deals, including:
- The Olympic athlete’s village (UK)
- Paris Champ Elysees mall ($628 million, France)
- The Shard ($707 million, UK)
- Harrod’s department store ($2.3 billion, UK)
- Canary Wharf ($518.7 million, UK)
- Porsche ($376 million, Germany)
- Barclays ($250 million, UK)
- LVMH ( $864.7 million, France)
Qatar Investment Authority, which also has significant stakes in Sainsbury, the London Stock Exchange and the Chelsea Barracks site, has spent $7 billion on real estate since 2007, almost 80 percent of it in London and Paris, RCA told Reuters, which reports:
Sovereign wealth funds view top-quality property in the best locations as a safe bet in the global financial crisis…
“They have a lot of money to spend, so deals tend to be big and in the cities they know well,” (Joseph Kelly, director of market analysis at RCA, said).
Thoughts?
Credit: Photo by Mohamed Yahya
