Universtone, a global private equity real estate investment and development firm has invested in Bondstone, a private equity real estate investment and asset management firm focused on the Portuguese market.
Bondstone was formed by Paulo Loureiro, a Portuguese real estate entrepreneur and a former executive director at Morgan Stanley in New York.
With offices in Lisbon and Porto, Bondstone plans to deploy a total investment of EUR400 million by the end of 2021, by co-investing with prominent investors in value-add and opportunistic strategies in the commercial and residential sectors. The strategies will include development, refurbishment and repositioning projects.
“I believe this is an opportune time to invest in Portuguese real estate owing to economic growth, strong occupational markets, competitive tax policies and government incentives,” said Paulo Loureiro, CEO of Bondstone.
“Having previously successfully focused on residential development, we have decided to broaden the scope to the commercial real estate sector, where there are compelling opportunities to generate above-average returns from value-add and opportunistic strategies,” he added.
Universton has developed large-scale residential and commercial projects in France, Belgium, South Korea and Portugal with a total construction area of 870,000 sq m and a development value of around EUR1.7 billion for the past 25 years.
Bondstone’s advisory board includes CEO Paulo Loureiro, chairman Arnaud Khodara, the founder of Universtone, Francisco Perez, a partner at EverStream Capital Management, a global renewable energy infrastructure fund, Abdiel Santiago, who leads Panama’s USD1.4 billion sovereign wealth fund, Mark Taborsky, a former senior investment professional at Stanford, Harvard, PIMCO and BlackRock, and Patrick Swint, the founder and CEO of Knightsbridge Ventures, a private equity real estate platform.
Before forming Bondstone, Paulo Loureiro focused on developing high-quality residential projects in Lisbon, Cascais and Porto with a total investment of EUR100 million and a gross development value of EUR130 million through his company, Louvre Capital.
The assets and platform of Louvre Capital, which includes a team of 15 experienced investment and project management professionals and offices in Lisbon and Porto, have been taken over by Bondstone. An additional satellite office in London opened this month.
According to Loureiro, recent rental growth combined with low vacancy rates and a shortage of supply – especially for quality office space – has led to a supply-demand imbalance in the Lisbon and Porto office markets and contributed to a favourable arbitrage opportunity.
