LaSalle Investment Management (“LaSalle”) today announced that the Constantia European Property Fund, for which it acts as investment advisor for the Austrian Private Bank Constantia, was Austria's top performing Investment Fund across all asset classes in 2006.  In addition, the Fund was also the highest performing Real Estate Securities Fund across the whole of Europe, with a total return of 56.89% as measured against the EPRA Europe Index of 49.4%.  The management for Constantia European Property Fund is jointly handled by LaSalle (stockpicking) and Constantia Privatbank (asset allocation).

Mr. Ernst-Jan de Leeuw, LaSalle’s Director of Portfolio Management said, “This stellar performance highlights the fact that significant levels of returns can be achieved by exploiting improving economic growth, recovering real estate fundamentals, reduced tax leakage and abundant external growth opportunities.”

Mr. de Leeuw continued, “2006 saw real estate securities sustaining their trend of outperformance versus other asset classes, with the EPRA Index strongly outperforming bonds, stocks and utilities on three-year and five-year periods.  We continue to see interest in European real estate securities growing as investors look to diversify their portfolios and take advantage of ongoing attractive returns.”