German team advises Greenman on acquisition of ten Edeka supermarkets

Global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright has advised Greenman Investments on the acquisition of ten standalone Edeka supermarkets for around 60 million euros. The supermarket portfolio with a total lettable area of around 22,500 square metres was acquired for the Greenman OPEN fund.

Greenman Investments is a market-leading, sector-specific property investment fund manager with offices in Berlin, Frankfurt, Dublin, Paris and Warsaw. The company has total assets under management of over one billion euros. The Greenman OPEN ("OPEN") fund was launched in 2016 and has since become the largest German food retail fund available on the market.

The properties were acquired by Greenman directly from the Edeka Nordbayern-Sachsen-Thüringen Group and will be leased back by Edeka under a long-term sales-and-lease-back agreement. This is Greenman's second portfolio purchase from Edeka Nordbayern-Sachsen-Thüringen and the seventh sales-and-lease-back agreement with the entire Edeka Group. The properties will be managed by the Greenman subsidiaries GFORM (commercial) and White Bird (technical).

With the acquisition, Greenman aims to strengthen its investors' access to attractive and stable returns while supporting its goal of building a climate-neutral portfolio for the fund categorised under Article 9 of the Disclosure Regulation (SFDR). The transaction includes exclusively green leases. In addition, three of the properties are already equipped with photovoltaic systems. Greenman's subsidiary Greenman Energy is planning to equip the remaining seven properties with rooftop solar and install fast-charging points for electric vehicles.

Greenman Investments was advised by a German Norton Rose Fulbright team led by Frankfurt partner Dr Holger Wolf (real estate). The team also consisted of Dr Riccardo Marinello (Counsel), Anne-Sophie Wilhelmy (Senior Associate) (both Frankfurt, real estate), Dorothee Wille (Associate, Hamburg, Real Estate) and Tankred Freiberger (Senior Associate, Munich, real estate). Dr Holger Wolf and Anne-Sophie Wilhelmy had already advised on the first portfolio purchase of EDEKA Nordbayern-Thüringen and further sale-and-lease-back transactions of Greenman with EDEKA in their previous law firm before joining Norton Rose Fulbright.

Drees & Sommer was responsible for the technical due diligence. EDEKA Unternehmensgruppe Nordbayern-Sachsen-Thüringen was supported by GrothmannGeiser and JenAcon. Rosytslav Telyatnykov from White & Case LLP acted as notary.