Prudential Real Estate Investors completed more than $11 billion in global transactions in 2014, including 77 transactions in Europe totaling approximately $4 billion, the firm’s most ever in one year in the region, the company announced today. PREI, among the world’s largest real estate investment management and advisory businesses, is a business of Prudential Financial, Inc. (NYSE:PRU).

The transactions, which spanned the United States, Europe, Latin America and the Asia Pacific region, included investments in real estate equity and debt, and property dispositions across 262 transactions with the U.S. and Europe accounting for the majority of deals.

“Our global transactions activity in 2014 reflects PREI’s ability to successfully leverage our deep investment experience, rigorous research and risk management, and strong sourcing and execution capabilities around the world to create value for our clients,” said Eric Adler, chief executive officer of PREI. “As we enter 2015, we are focused on identifying the major trends and themes that are shaping the global property markets and will continue to seek opportunities where we can take additional risk to benefit from attractive non-core pricing and improved fundamentals, buy into late recovery markets and capitalize on structural shifts resulting from the changing nature of real estate markets.”

In the U.S., PREI closed 156 transactions, including acquisitions and dispositions of more than $6 billion. Consistent with PREI’s expectations for further improvement in office demand as higher value-added jobs are created with very limited new supply, nearly half of PREI’s U.S. acquisitions were in the office sector, with multifamily investments comprising approximately one-quarter of the firm’s activity. During the year, PREI continued to execute against its strategy to invest primarily in high barrier, coastal markets.

The northeast region represented the majority of overall acquisitions activity, whereas investments in California alone, with the majority of allocations in these same sectors, represented nearly one quarter of PREI’s U.S. activity.

In Europe, PREI closed 77 transactions, the most ever in one year, executing approximately $4 billion in acquisitions and dispositions across six countries. The United Kingdom and Germany accounted for most of the activity, with more than $2 billion in transactions. Approximately three quarters of European acquisitions were in the retail and office sectors reflecting PREI’s focus on identifying value-add opportunities in capital-starved late recovery markets in the eurozone periphery and second-tier cities.

PREI’s lending strategies invested approximately $775 million across five countries. Additionally, PREI was an active investor in U.K. residential ground leases in 2014, contracting to buy more than 25,000 properties through several large portfolio transactions.

PREI completed approximately $600 million in transactions in the Asia Pacific region, and approximately $360 million in Latin America. The majority of Latin American acquisitions were industrial development projects and building expansions in the central area of Mexico, including Mexico City, Monterrey and the northern state of Chihuahua.

Representative transactions included:

  • Acquisition of Tower 46 (55 West 46th Street), a Class A condominium in New York City comprised of 347,000 square feet in a joint venture with SL Green
  • Disposition of a €78.6 million portfolio of 25 residential ‘Altbau’ buildings located within the S-Bahn ring of Berlin
  • Acquisition of Across Meguro Tower, a 129-unit residential property including three floors of office space located within the prime Tokyo residential district of Meguro
  • Acquisition of 49/51 avenue George V, a 56,672 square feet (5,265 square meters) Grade A retail and office building in Paris
  • Acquisition of controlling stakes in a high yielding, grocery-anchored retail portfolio valued at $361 million across 83 properties throughout Germany, in a joint venture with the Third Swedish National Pension Fund (AP3)
  • Acquisition of Mission Towers I and II, two 12‐story Class A office towers totaling 576,000 square feet in Santa Clara, Calif.

Prudential Real Estate Investors is the global real estate investment business of Prudential Financial, Inc. (NYSE: PRU). Investing in real estate on behalf of institutional clients since 1970, PREI today has more than 650 employees located in 20 cities around the world, and gross assets under management of $58.2 billion ($43.5 billion net) as of September 30, 2014. PREI offers to its global client base a broad range of real estate investment vehicles across the risk-return spectrum and geographies, including core, core plus, value-add, opportunistic, debt, securities, and specialized investment strategies. For more information, visit www.prei.com.

Prudential Financial, Inc. (NYSE:PRU), a financial services leader with more than $1 trillion of assets under management as of September 30, 2014, has operations in the United States, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Prudential’s diverse and talented employees are committed to helping individual and institutional customers grow and protect their wealth through a variety of products and services, including life insurance, annuities, retirement-related services, mutual funds and investment management. In the U.S., Prudential’s iconic Rock symbol has stood for strength, stability, expertise and innovation for more than a century. For more information, please visit www.news.prudential.com.