RealCast: Market bounces-back, technology tempts, Tokyo triumphs, wood gets ingrained

RealCast: The Week in Real Assets
As lockdown restrictions ease, Azora invests €148 million in a sale-and-leaseback deal on two flagship hotels in Portugal’s Algarve, targeting Europe’s recovering sun-and-beach hotel market; New River Retail outperforms; Ardent completes the acquisition of Touchwood Shopping Centre, Solihull, one of the wealthier suburbs of UK city Birmingham, and starts to plan its future.

Meanwhile, US department store retailer Neiman Marcus looks forward and toward technology to transform the shopping experience and its own fortunes. And taking a different angle on technology, Morgan Stanley acquires a major asset at the UK’s Cambridge Science Park.

Elsewhere: as the Tokyo Olympics gets underway, architecture and design magazine Dezeen looks at some of the architecture that has emerged from the Japanese capital’s preparations; retailer Burberry opens a new flagship store on London’s Sloane Street; and GLP announces that it is planning to speculatively develop a large amount of logistics space in the UK

But logistics thrives throughout Europe and Hines, BentallGreenOak and Clarion Partners Europe are making significant progress with their strategies in France. Meanwhile, echoing the recent announcement that Cromwell has founded a fund comprising timber-built assets, Paris-headquartered Axa IM Alts has announce that it is to develop an office block in Munich – using mostly timber.

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