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Credit Suisse Asset Management will re-open its frozen EUR 6 bn open-ended CS Euroreal fund on 21 May for one day of trading, it announced on Wednesday.

If the demand for investor redemptions exceeds the available net liquidity of 25% of the fund's volume, the fund will be liquidated, Credit Suisse said. ‘We will open the fund for one day to see how it does,’ a Credit Suisse spokesperson told PropertyEU. ‘It’s very difficult to gauge in this difficult climate and after what happened to SEB but we have got good feedback from our distributors,’ she said.

The move follows a similar initiative by SEB Asset Management earlier this week which re-opened its EUR 6.3 bn open-ended fund ImmoInvest on Monday for one day of trading but was forced to announce later that day that the fund would, in fact, be liquidated by April 2017 after too many investors decided to redeem their units in the fund.

The Credit Suisse spokesperson said that following the sale of an undisclosed property in Amsterdam this week, the CS Euroreal fund’s liquidity will be boosted to 27% from 25% by the day of re-opening. The fund has been frozen to redemptions for two years.

If the cash buffer is sufficient to redeem the fund units tendered by investors, the fund will continue to operate under new regulations which stipulate that new units be issued and tendered once a year rather than on a daily basis as is currently the case.

CS Euroreal's two largest properties in Amsterdam are the 41,200 m² office scheme Bijlmerdreef 24-74 which was valued at EUR 177 mln in 2010 and the 29,579 m² Vinoly scheme at Claude Debussylaan 12 t/m 54 in Amsterdam Zuidas (South Axis) business area. Vinoly was valued at EUR 135 mln in 2010.

Credit Suisse is also believed to be selling Euroreal's EUR 170 mln Europa-Galerie shopping centre in Saarbrücken, Germany to Hamburg-based fund manager Union Investment.

Union Investment has declined to comment on the rumour.

Another seven German open-ended property funds are still frozen - with combined assets of around EUR 1.8 bn under management. These include SEB’s EUR 284 mln Global Property fund and UBS’s EUR 344 mln 3 Sector Real Estate fund. AXA Real Estate has until 25 May to decide on whether to re-open or liquidate its Immosolutions fund. UBS has until 6 October to decide on re-opening the 3 Sector fund.

Almost 20% of Germany’s open-ended funds, including KanAM’s grundinvest fund, which now has EUR 3.9 bn of AUM following a spate of sales, and SEB’s ImmoInvest, are in the process of being liquidated. Together, they hold EUR 15.94 bn of AUM, according to Germany’s BVI. In total, Germany’s open-ended funds held EUR 85.21 bn of AUM as of end-March 2012.

Click on the link below to read: Union Investment poised to buy EUR 170m mall in Saarbrücken