The Management team of Natixis Capital Partners has successfully concluded a Management Buy-out and effective 1 March, 2012, will operate fully independently under the name Captiva Capital Management (Captiva).
The buy-out team has been working together since 2001, and has developed strong relationships with leading institutional investors, including pension funds, insurance companies and financial institutions. To date, Captiva has invested EUR 1.3 billion of equity capital in the real estate sector on behalf of its institutional clients, either directly or through specialised investment platforms. Those investments include over 1,500 properties across Europe worth more than EUR8 billion.
Building on this successful track record and investment experience, Captiva will pursue the same investor-centric model, selectively investing in portfolio transactions, developments, and investment platforms that it will incubate or acquire to develop.
In addition to its founders and managing directors John van Oost (pictured), Daniel Quai and Roger Lee, Captiva has appointed Stephan Fritsch as its fourth managing director. Together, they will lead the more than 30 strong team with offices in London, Hamburg, Paris, Milan and Luxembourg. Captiva is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in the UK.
“First and foremost, we are investors with a strict focus on investment performance,” says Van Oost. “We concentrate on selecting the right investment at the right time with the right level of risk, in Europe’s core markets. We offer benchmark institutional quality infrastructure, reporting and risk management, combined with the entrepreneurial approach of an established boutique team.
“It is our firm belief that such an approach will provide the necessary flexibility and investment vehicles to achieve attractive returns in what are currently volatile European real estate markets. We need to be able to act quickly on investment opportunities, to realise investments when appropriate and stay on the sidelines when there are no attractive investment opportunities. We have no legacy business to protect, and do not invest in a local market segment or real estate class if there are no attractive opportunities for our investors.”
The European real estate markets continue to face massive challenges and high volatility stemming from the 2008 financial and economic crisis. With a goal to deliver absolute, risk-adjusted investment performance to its investors, the Captiva investment approach follows an entrepreneurial market view in combination with out-of-the-box thinking, based on local know-how, execution expertise and a rigorous risk management.
Investments will be conducted both through closed-end funds and investments vehicles that are managed on behalf of Captiva’s clients. In this way, the firm will pursue project developments, single asset deals, portfolio transactions and real estate venture capital transactions, where specialised investment platforms are grown or acquired. The last of these was successfully implemented by Captiva with the founding of Germany’s first REIT, Alstria Office REIT AG, which it took public on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in 2007.
