Hines and ING agree about first Green Loan Facility

Frankfurt am Main - Hines, the international real estate firm, has secured with ING in Germany the first green loan facility for the Hines European Core Fund (HECF).

Next to the existing €40 million finance for Werfthaus, a prime office building located in Frankfurt, and £32 million finance for an urban logistics park let to international handling company Dnata, located near the cargo area at Heathrow airport, London. Both assets display better than average energy performance levels as well as sustainability certificates such as DGNB and BREEAM. 

The facility will enable the HECF to accelerate its strategy of pursuing sustainable and environmentally responsible real estate investments and strengthens the partnership between Hines and ING, started in 2015.

Simone Pozzato, Deputy Fund Manager for HECF at Hines, said:

The Fund’s investment strategy has always been clearly focused on making responsible and sustainable investments. However, this green loan facility gives us the capacity to deliver our investors’ ambitions of growing our portfolio of future-proofed assets where value and returns are aligned with environmental performance.

 Sharif Nahas, Director of Financial Markets Sales in Germany & Austria at ING, said:

Remarkably for the GBP loan Hines has chosen SONIA (Sterling Overnight Index Average) compounded-in arrears as the interest reference rate, the first for ING Germany and ING Group globally on this new benchmark. We are excited to have concluded this bilateral loan over SONIA, also in light of the partial cash-flow hedge now being priced over SONIA as the market standard.

 Simone Schmidt, Managing Director Real Estate Finance of ING Germany, said: 

We are very proud to have issued ING Germany’s first green real estate loan to Hines, one of our top European clients. We are looking forward to more sustainable financing and further pan-european financing projects together.

 Simone Pozzato continues:

Our partnership with ING and this loan commitment ensures not only great financial performance for our investors, but also a positive impact on communities where we invest, achieving the highest levels of sustainability across a wide range of areas, including energy performance, stakeholder engagement, building certificates, resilience and utilities management.

ING is one of the leading financiers of commercial real estate in the real estate finance sector worldwide with a business portfolio of about 28 billion euros.

HECF was recently recognized as one of the top property funds in Europe, achieving the MSCI European Property Investment Award for the best performing pan-European balanced fund in the period comprised between 2017 and 2019. In November 2020, HECF achieved the highest possible rating of five Green stars out of five in the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB) for an unprecedented fourth year in a row. GRESB, the leading Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) benchmark for real estate and infrastructure investments across the world, has named HECF one of the “best of the best” in sustainability leadership across the real estate sector. 

Hines is a privately owned global real estate investment firm founded in 1957 with a presence in 225 cities in 25 countries. Hines has approximately $144.1 billion¹ of assets under management, including $75.5 billion for which Hines serves as investment manager, including non-real estate assets, and $68.6 billion for which Hines provides third-party property-level services. The firm has 165 developments currently underway around the world. Historically, Hines has developed, redeveloped or acquired 1,426 properties, totaling over 472 million square feet. The firm’s current property and asset management portfolio includes 576 properties, representing over 246 million square feet. With extensive experience in investments across the risk spectrum and all property types, and a pioneering commitment to sustainability, Hines is one of the largest and most-respected real estate organizations in the world.
¹AUM includes both the global Hines organization as well as RIA AUM. Since entering Europe in 1991, Hines has grown its European platform to include offices in 16 cities as well as a presence in 55 cities in 13 countries, with €22.7 billion of assets under management, including €19.8 billion for which Hines serves as an investment manager and €2.9 billion for which Hines provides third-party property-level services, in Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom. Click Opens in a new tabhere for more information.

ING Wholesale Banking Germany comprises the corporate clients business of ING in Germany and is part of the ING Group’s worldwide Wholesale Banking network with offices in more than 40 countries. ING Wholesale Banking offers banking services for large, internationally operating corporate clients. In addition to traditional banking products such as Corporate Lending and Transaction Services, ING is a world leading name in structured & project financing concepts, complemented by capital market solutions. ING Wholesale Banking Germany has approximately 300 employees based in the headquarters Frankfurt am Main who oversaw a credit volume of EUR 35 billion by the end of 2019.