Czechs eye up Slovakia

Tomas Berka, head of real estate, Redside: We at Redside are based in the Czech Republic and manage assets worth EUR 500 mln in five investment funds. We started with building our real estate fund three years ago. It comprises of 50 pct office and 50 pct retail properties and includes stores such as Obi, Tesco, Penny Market and Pepco, as well as class ‘A’ office buildings in Prague. Investors can join the fund by purchasing its shares. The way we saw it, our portfolio was of the right size and structure. However, as a result of feedback from our investors and in order to further diversify, we started looking at and focusing on the industrial sector as well. We’ve now made it real by taking the first step and setting up our new, industrial portfolio with industrial assets in the Czech Republic and Slovakia for now but we’re looking to expand it to the whole CEE region in the near future. That was the reason for the deal in Trenčín last year; to get our ne