South-African investment fund New Europe Property Investments (NEPI) has acquired the City Business Center in Timisoara, which has three existing office buildings totaling 25,000 sqm. The sellers were businessmen Ovidiu Sandor and his partners. Sandor will continue to develop the office park, adding two more buildings and taking the project to 43,000 sqm, according to Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL), which acted as the exclusive adviser on behalf of the vendors. The value of the deal was not disclosed.

“Despite the challenging economic environment, the [...] office complex has attracted several offers from major international players in the last 3-4 years. As the first major institutional office transaction outside Bucharest, CBC is of particular importance to this evolving market, as it demonstrates the continued existence of investor demand for regional projects provided that they are truly prime and dominant,” said Troy Javaher, Managing Director for Jones Lang LaSalle in Romania.

The existing office buildings are currently 90 percent leased to large international tenants such as IBM, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Vodafone, Alcatel-Lucent, Wipro Technologies, BCR, Deloitte and Microsoft. Construction work on the fourth building is underway and is due for completion this summer, while the fifth building is scheduled for the end of 2013.

Corina Saceanu, corina@romania-insider.com

(photo source: JLL)