Hungry like the Griffin

The value of the assets that Griffin Real Estate has under its management has increased 25-fold since 2014, from EUR 200 mln to over EUR 5 bln. “We have invested more than EUR 2 bln in Poland with our strategic partners. We have also been successful in securing several investment partners, starting with Oaktree Capital Management, Pimco, Redefine, Kajima and most recently Wing,” points out Maciej Dyjas, a managing partner of Griffin Real Estate. The impact Griffin has made has been through several business platforms, which the company has either acquired or created and now manages for strategic investment partners. These include Echo Investment, EPP, Chariot, Resi4Rent, Student Depot, Polcom and European Logistics Investment. The company is also active in financing through Griffin Property Finance, the largest non-banking, real estate-related lending platform in Poland. Griffin first entered the world of big business in 2010 when it started its strategic investment partnership with Oaktree. In 2015, together with Oaktree and Pimco, it bought majority stakes in Echo Investment. The PLN 1.1 bln mln deal was the largest ever real estate transaction in the CEE region and the biggest in Europe that year. “That was the moment when we started to play in another league,” claims Nebil Senman, a managing partner of Griffin Real Estate. The next big step was the establishment of Echo Polska Properties – now EPP) – the first listed pure-play Polish retail property platform. Griffin did this together with Redefine Properties, a REIT the company managed to bring to Poland from South Africa. In 2017, Griffin itself set up Poland’s first REIT-type company, Griffin Premium RE, which was later sold and renamed as Globalworth Poland. Another significant transaction took place in January 2018, when Griffin jointly with Oaktree, Pimco and Redefine bought M1’s EUR 1 bln portfolio of 28 Polish retail assets from Ares, Axa and Apollo Rida. “That was the third largest deal of the year globally,” adds Nebil Senman. In late 2018 there was another big deal, of around PLN 1 bln – the acquisition by Griffin and Pimco of a 70 pct stake in Polcom, a Poland-based hotel developer and manufacturer of construction modules for the global hospitality sector. “Since 2019, with Kajima as our strategic partner we have also been accelerating the growth of our student housing business Student Depot, which we want to double in size within next 2–3 years,” reveals Maciej Dyjas.

Griffin is certainly aiming to stay ahead of the curve, playing an important role in the introduction of new formats to the Polish market, such as student housing (the company set up Student Depot in 2016 together with Oaktree and in 2019 it partnered with Kajima Europe to buy it) as well as residential-rental concepts (the Resi4Rent platform), and it also brought new investors to Poland who had not previously been active on this market. “Over the last few years, Griffin, as a privately owned and privately managed company, has turned itself into the most active investment manager in the CEE’s private equity real estate sector. We have considerably expanded our business and been the most active and innovative cross-sector investor in the CEE region,” declares Maciej Dyjas. The award gives him yet another reason to feel chuffed. “This award, which crowns the entire decade, is extraordinary. We are proud, we feel honoured. It shows that our achievements are widely appreciated and recognised by the market. We are also very proud that EPP and Globalworth Poland were second and third, as it shows that the platforms we have established are successful and also highly regarded,” believes Maciej Dyjas. RO