W. P. Carey Acquires Siemens HQ in Oslo for $90M

By Barbra Murray, Contributing Editor

 W. P. Carey Inc. has just added the Siemens AS headquarters in Oslo, Norway, to its holdings. CPA:18 – Global, one of W. P. Carey’s publicly held non-traded REIT affiliates, recently acquired the new 166,000-square-foot office building from developer Oslo Business Park AS for $90 million.

The transaction marks W. P. Carey’s entrée into Norway and the expansion of its global footprint to 21 countries. And the company picked up quite a gem for its first purchase in Norway. The Siemens AS headquarters just opened its doors in December, 2013, and is part of the new Oslo Business Park, which will ultimately encompass nine office towers accounting for 1.1 million square feet within a burgeoning commercial submarket of the city. Additionally, the property is LEED Gold certified and holds the distinction of being Norway’s most energy efficient office building. And then there’s the tenancy. Siemens AS, the Norwegian operating subsidiary of German engineering and electronics corporation Siemens AG, certainly constitutes a credit tenant, and it has made a substantial commitment to the site with a 12-year lease featuring the option for two 10-year renewals.

W. P. Carey’s European portfolio has been undergoing quite a growth spurt.  “As is the case with the Siemens AS transaction, last year, W. P. Carey acquired several European assets under pre-existing long-term net-leases that met its traditional investment criteria based on credit-worthiness and long-term criticality of the assets to the operations of the tenant,” Arvi Luoma, director of W. P. Carey told Commercial Property Executive. “In essence the same disciplined, opportunistic strategy and investment criteria to deploy capital that have governed W. P. Carey’s acquisition activities for more than 40 years have been extended to this wider pool of assets.”

The company’s European acquisitions in 2013 were numerous and included the purchase of an office facility of the Department of State for Communities and Local Government in Manchester, England, for $62 million. But it wasn’t just about the office sector. The lengthy roster of transactions also included the $85 million acquisition of the 896,900-square-foot logistics center of H&M in Poznan, Poland. And the list goes on.

“Given its resources and the changing nature of the market, W. P Carey anticipates it will continue to apply its established investment principles to a wider pool of single-tenant net-leased real estate throughout Europe in 2014,” Luoma added.