Real Estate Finance | Feb 28, 2011

Refinancing of the Opéra portfolio in Paris

A pool of banks led by Helaba has granted a loan of EUR 138 million to Benson Elliot Capital Management and Générale Continentale Investissement. This concerns a portfolio of four buildings in Paris and the suburb Issy-le-Moulineaux.

The Italian Opera is the building that gives its name to the portfolio and was once the head office of the newspaper Le Monde. Since 1999, it has been let in full to the Ministry of Justice. The portfolio also comprises a building in the 13th District (Arrondissement) (the Olympique) and two office buildings in the business district of Issy-les-Moulineaux. Two of the buildings originally belonging to the portfolio and still part of it, are the imposing Matignon/St. Honoré (8th District) and the building which has the address 51/52 rue des Belles Feuilles (16th District), which was sold in 2008. Since the purchase in 2007, the partners Benson Elliot and the GCI have raised the letting rate from 65% to 99%. The lease contracts of the Ministry of Justice and Editis, which together account for 45% of the portfolio’s total space, have been extended by a further 6 or 9 years respectively. Moreover, further lease contracts have been concluded with first-class tenants such as Socotec, Oracle and France Telecom.