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Private equity group Victory Advisors has launched a new real estate investment company called Icon which will focus on prime and core office buildings in the Benelux region.

Icon has an intial portfolio of buildings valued at around €700 mln and comprising over 220,000 m2, located mainly in Amsterdam and Brussels. The portfolio is split between prime (72%) and core buildings (28%).

One of the company’s key assets is the Atrium building in Amsterdam’s Zuidas business district, acquired in June 2013. Icon is spending around €100 mln on a full renovation of the 35,000 m2 property and plans to add two towers totalling 22,000 m2 of space.

Earlier in 2013, Victory Advisors acquired a portfolio of offices located in B locations in the Netherlands from UBS Euro Value Added (EVA) Real Estate for €85 mln. Aareal Bank financed the transaction.

Founded by former Blackstone managing director Erik Moresco, Victory Advisors has been targeting real estate investments since 2010 through its Victory European Real Estate Fund I.

The firm was one of the first of a new generation of institutional-quality real estate investors to target the Benelux region, attracted by its positive fundamentals and nascent recovery.

Icon’s launch comes at a time when commercial real estate in the Benelux is seeing the highest levels of activity since the financial crisis, with investors being drawn by attractive valuations relative to other major real estate markets. This activity has accelerated with the economic recovery in the region.

According to research by JLL, property investment volumes in the Benelux region grew by 70% in 2013-14, almost triple the average European increase. At around 5.5%, prime yields in the Benelux region are currently highly attractive compared with ‘trophy’ locations such as Zurich, Paris, London and Munich.

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