French supermarket group Casino Guichard Perrachon has formed a partnership with the Whitehall funds managed by Goldman Sachs to develop shopping centres, initially in Poland.
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Casino divested its Polish operations in 2006, but retained a group of commercial property development projects and real estate, as well as Mayland, its Eastern European real estate development company.
Since then, Mayland has grown, with the first three projects now under construction.
Casino said that in order to sustain the growth of this business, it had formed a partnership with the Whitehall funds, with Whitehall financing 75% of the development costs. The Whitehall funds will invest a minimum of EUR500m (US$680.6m) over the next five years.
Casino will hold the majority of the voting rights and should receive between 65% and 70% of the development margin, the French company said.
Casino said that the partnership would provide “an opportunity for Casino to optimise the value of its Polish real estate assets, to speed up the pace of development of its commercial property projects in Eastern Europe and to limit its investment to current levels”.
The company added that the partnership might be extended to other Eastern European markets in due course.
