Poland – the obvious choice

Dimitris Raptis, deputy CEO, CIO, Globalworth Real Estate Investments: We already had extensive experience from Romania, where we became the largest player in the office real estate market. We wanted to repeat this success outside the Romanian market and become the leading office investor in the region. If you want to invest in Central and Eastern Europe, Poland is the obvious choice because of its scale, liquidity and the attractiveness of the market. The office market comprises 10 mln sqm, not only in Warsaw but also in strong regional centres. By comparison, there are 3 mln sqm of offices in Romania, 90 pct of which is in Bucharest. The last twelve months have been successful for us on the international financial markets – we raised more than EUR 1.5 bln from bonds and equity for real estate investment. Poland is a better known and more liquid market than Romania for many investors and also provides us with diversification. But why GPRE? When we made the strategic decisi