Cromwell European Reit's public offer 3.1 times subscribed

CROMWELL European Reit's public offer was about 3.1 times subscribed, its manager said.

In an exchange filing on Wednesday evening, Cromwell Ereit Management Pte Ltd announced that it had received 4,448 valid applications for 111.23 million units.

The Reit had 36.36 million units available for the public offer, which closed at 12 noon on Tuesday (Nov 28).

It had also offered 392.17 million units for an international placement, which was oversubscribed as well. The manager, however, did not say how much more the placement tranche was subscribed by.

Under the placement tranche, DBS Bank Ltd - Treasury Investments was allocated 27.27 million units, while SeaTown Master Fund, which is related to Temasek Holdings, was given eight million units.

UBS Asset Management (Hong Kong) Ltd received 2.7 million units, Cerberus Singapore Investor LLC 1.8 million units, and independent director Lim Swe Guan 396,400 units.

The Reit manager had altogether offered 428.5 million units at 0.55 euros per unit to raise total proceeds of 866 million euros (S$1.4 billion).

With the initial public offering proceeds, it will acquire 60 properties in Denmark, France, Germany and the Netherlands from the four funds currently managed by Cromwell Property Group for third-party investors, and 14 Italian properties from independent third parties.

In the Wednesday announcement, the Reit manager also said that the stabilising manager, UBS AG Singapore branch, has over-allotted an additional 45.45 million units. All of this was allocated to the placement tranche.

This will be covered through units borrowed by UBS from Cromwell Singapore Holdings prior to the start of the Reit's trading. UBS will return an equivalent number of units to Cromwell Singapore, either by buying units in the open market by undertaking stabilising actions and/or through the exercise of the over-allotment option.

Units in the Reit will start trading on the Singapore Exchange at 2pm on Thursday (Nov 30).

Goldman Sachs (Singapore) and UBS AG Singapore Branch are the joint issue managers for the offering. The two banks, plus DBS Bank, are the joint global coordinators for the offering as well.