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.”
About LaSalle Investment Management Securities
LaSalle Investment Management Securities is a leading real estate securities investment manager for pension funds, institutional and retail investors around the globe. With more than 20 years’ investment experience, the firm currently has $9billion of assets under management in listed real estate securities, including US, European and global mandates. LaSalle Investment Management Securities is LaSalle Investment Management’s specialist securities division, and as such benefits from the resources of both LaSalle Investment Management and Jones Lang LaSalle. Based in Amsterdam, LaSalle’s European Real Estate Securities group currently manages over $1.5 billion of assets.
About LaSalle Investment Management
LaSalle Investment Management, Inc., a member of the Jones Lang LaSalle group (NYSE: JLL), is a leading global real estate investment manager, with approximately $40 billion of assets under management. LaSalle Investment Management is active across a range of real estate capital and operating markets including private and public, debt and equity. LaSalle Investment Management is authorised and regulated for investment business in the UK by the Financial Services Authority. For more information, visit www.lasalle.com.
About Constantia Privatbank
Constantia Privatbank is Austria’s leading private bank. Amongst other business fields it hat set a string focus on real estate investments. Constantia Privatbank manages two of continental Europe’s largest listed real estate companies, IMMOFINANZ AG and IMMOEAST AG with a combined market cap of 11.6 bn. Euro.