Invista in £166m equity-raising campaign

The campaign was launched just as the company announced its intention to join the main market of the London Stock Exchange.

The closed-ended, Luxembourg-registered company will be the flagship European investment fund of Invista Real Estate Investment Management, the UK’s largest AIM-listed property fund manager. It is expected to have a market capitalisation of around £208m and a gross asset value of around E700m (£472m) at floatation.

The offer will be made through a placing and public offer of 83.1m ordinary shares at 200p a share.

The Invista European Real Estate Trust already owns, or has contracts to acquire, a portfolio of 20 commercial properties to the value of E488m (£329.5m) across seven continental european countries including France and Germany.

It plans to target sectors and markets which it believes are undervalued and which offer strong income returns from relatively low risk tenants and it hopes to deliver a 6% annualised dividend yield for the financial period ending 30 September 2007.

JPMorgan Cazenove Limited and Citigroup Global Markets are acting as joint global co-ordinators, joint bookrunners to the Trust.

Duncan Owen, chief executive of Invista Real Estate Investment Management, said: ‘The IPO of the company represents a significant step by Invista Real Estate Management in creating an income-focused Continental European property investment vehicle for institutional and retail investors.’