Martin Slabbert and Victor Semionov, the founders and former executive management of NEPI, have established a new property development and investment partnership. The business, Prime Kapital raised in the beginning of March 2016, capital in excess of €260 million, and is currently looking at investment opportunities in retail, office, industrial and residential development across the CEE region.
“Over the past 9 years we have had tremendous success in building a large scale retail focused property investment business. However, we saw great opportunity across the broader spectrum of development and investment and took the decision to pursue this in a new setting with a strong team of partners,” said Slabbert.
Martin and Victor are joined in Prime Kapital by other executive partners, who bring with them a range of skills and depth of experience, equipping the business with a formidable management team which has the most extensive track record and experience in real estate development and investment in Romania.
Semionov commented: “The combination of our flexible mandate and the freedom Prime Kapital has as a well-capitalised, privately owned, business work together to enable us to make investment decisions truly aimed on building the best long-term value. The absence of a short term objectives which often dominates the thinking in a publicly owned business opens up a range of valuable options not previously available to us.”
At an operational level the management team is supported by a team of experienced analysts and finance personnel to assist with identification, analysis and evaluation of investment opportunities and to provide transactional support when investments are made. Given the size of Prime Kapital’s capital base and the proximity of its first development projects, the business is actively looking to recruit further talented, specialized and experienced personnel to assist with aspects such as design, project management, leasing and other related functions of a real estate development business
Notwithstanding its balance sheet capacity, the team understands the need to creatively assemble development opportunities – in particular the need in some situations to enter into joint venture arrangements with landowners and other developers in order to get development projects underway. Prime Kapital is not averse to considering such configurations and its management team has extensive experience in successfully assembling property development joint ventures.
With the strength of its investment pipeline, Prime Kapital expects to announce in the near term the conclusion of a number of transactions.
With the existing capital base of the business, Prime Kapital is targeting a development portfolio at a cost in excess of €500 million in the medium term. This notwithstanding, as a long-term focused business, Prime Kapital is not under pressure to commit its capital within a specified time and it remains closely focused on prioritizing value creation through sensible acquisitions over assembling a large asset base at a commercially unjustified cost.
