ABSTRACT
Pan-European retail developers had spent their time from the late 1990s onwards building shopping centres of all formats across Europe. New European opportunity funds were also filling out the layer below the financially engineered strategies of the investment banks. Developers seeded funds with completed developments, giving them a partial exit for their investments. They then retained a stake in the fund and took a management fee from the fund's investors. As the funds industry moved through the early years of the new millennium, all the arguments were in place for investors to adopt indirect investing on a major scale. The setting up of the European Association for Investors in Non-Listed Real Estate Vehicles (INREV), an industry association particularly focused on the funds, added to the sense of a joined-up part of the market. Investment Property Databank was revolutionary in first providing property performance information, while INREV began an index solely focused on fund performance.
