Its real estate assets is estimated at EUR 13

German open Fund Manager, Itad is a global investor whose headquarters are in Hamburg. Its real estate assets is estimated at EUR 13.2 billion. More than half of this heritage is distributed in all major German cities, but it is Paris hosting the most important real estate investments, with EUR 2 billion. The German open Fund is an investment model for private persons, who can purchase shares of buildings with the possibility to resell them at any time on the basis of the values established by real experts. This model will be introduced in France in 2007 with the creation of real estate funds (real estate collective investment undertakings) that, following the SCPI (civil real estate investment companies), will provide liquidity to holders of paper.

Difa currently manages five funds including three for private investors and two for institutional investors. Dr. Reinhard Kutscher is a member of the Executive Board since 1999.

What is Itad and its activity

It is an open German Fund Manager. Difa invests in real estate business buildings: offices, shops and hotels. We started our activity forty years ago by investing only in Germany and are out of our borders to interest us first to Britain, then the France and other European countries. Ten years ago, we went to the United States and Asia where we have started to buy buildings in Seoul, Korea and we are about to offices us in China in Shanghai more recently.

After a considerable price increase in traditional markets like Europe and the United States, we have strengthened our activities in emerging countries. We have a portfolio of seven buildings in the Mexico, while the major European investors are just discovering this market which offers very superior to those of Europe returns. Today, with the five funds that we manage, both for institutional and three for private investors, we are the second opened the largest Germany Fund Manager.

How do you handle these funds and how you arbitrez your heritage

Holder of a real estate heritage valued at EUR 13.2 billion, we are present on the major world real estate markets with our own teams and partners to detect investments tailored to our strategy. Each fund prefers different targets, as regards both the quality of buildings and their location and their prices, their size or their risk profile. We are long-term investors, but we "work" our buildings and resell them when they arrived at maturity.

For example, in Paris, where we just surrender to Morgan Stanley building Equinox at Saint-Denis, after having kept three years. In fact, do we just not to acquire existing buildings, but we we involve in the construction of buildings with developers. This is the case for building France Avenue of 15,000 square metres designed by Norman Foster in operation Paris-Rive-gauche, where our Accor tenant being installed its headquarters, or to Marseille for the future Radisson Hotel Vieux - Port.

Are you going back on the German market where appear of many competitors, including French

After reaching a low in 2005, the German market is recovering and rents should start rising. Foreign investors flock to our markets. Our classic fund high demand of foreign investors offers opportunities to take advantage of attractive prices particularly in the sale of portfolios. Strategically, we want to reduce the share of the heritage that these funds have in Germany. End of October, we sold two large portfolios for an amount of EUR 190 million to IVG and 670 million euros to Tishman Speyer, which acquired 10 sets of offices, 186.000 metres square, located in Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Munich and Stuttgart.

These two funds, which have reduced their commitments in certain markets of German offices, now examine opportunities internationally and of course France. The Germany, where we have a portfolio of 120 buildings through our funds, remains the largest market of Difa. We are still very active on the domestic market. The recently launched funds are investment in Germany. One of these funds comes from commit to 60 in a project of a large shopping centre in Essen in the Ruhr Basin, and our Difa-Global Fund has acquired a building of offices in Stuttgart. According to the policy applied to each product, it is possible that we are buyers and sellers at the same time on a given market.