Frankfurt. Just a week after the residential real estate company Grand City Properties (GCP) joined Germany's second largest landlord LEG Immobilien, the US investment bank Goldman Sachs has disclosed a large position in the Düsseldorf company.
As can be seen from a voting rights announcement published on Tuesday, the bank holds shares and financial instruments that together add up to 28.28 percent of LEG's voting rights. Previously, the overall reported position was only 4.54 percent.
A spokeswoman for LEG did not want to comment on the procedure. GCP could not immediately be reached for comment. A new situation is developing around LEG.
Just a week ago, the Aroundtown subsidiary from Luxembourg announced that it held 20.04 percent of LEG shares. The share package is worth more than 700 million euros.
Experts suspect that Goldman Sachs is supporting GCP in its investment in LEG and acting as a so-called financial intermediary. The bank would therefore have acquired the shares on behalf of third parties.
However, most of these are not directly held shares. Goldman Sachs' actual voting rights share is only 0.55 percent. A further 27.73 percent is accounted for by various financial instruments, including clawback rights, usage rights, options and swaps.
The largest individual position consists of call options on 11.6 million LEG shares, which correspond to 15.09 percent of the share capital and expire on November 19, 2026. In addition, there are rights to reclaim around 7.4 million shares or 9.67 percent of the voting rights. The reporting threshold was already exceeded on October 20th.
The procedure is reminiscent of the controversial access by the major Italian bank Unicredit to the German Commerzbank. Unicredit also used the services of other banks such as the Japanese Nomura, which received a fine from the financial regulator Bafin a few days ago due to late notification of voting rights regarding its Commerzbank shares.
The Aroundtown subsidiary GCP had described its LEG share package as a financial investment, but saw an increase in its shares to up to 29.9 percent as a possibility. However, the company also reserves the right to reduce its shareholding or to exit completely, it was said. From 30 percent, GCP would have to make a mandatory offer to the remaining LEG shareholders.
To date, Aroundtown is known as a commercial real estate investor. Behind the company is the controversial Israeli investor Yakir Gabay, who now only holds 15 percent of the shares and, according to the company, has no operational influence.
It is not clear from the voting rights notification whether the now disclosed position of Goldman Sachs is related to this entry. Nor can it be deduced from this that the US investment bank itself is seeking a strategic investment of a corresponding amount.
With around 170,000 apartments, LEG is the second largest listed housing group in Germany after Vonovia. The company has its focus in North Rhine-Westphalia. The Düsseldorf-based company only responded to the entry by saying that they shared GCP and Aroundtown's belief that both LEG's strategy and real estate portfolio offer significant upside potential.
