Gulf Islamic Investments (“GII”), a leading Shari’ah-compliant investment management company headquartered in the UAE, has acquired two German senior care facilities as part of its latest acquisitions through the EUR 500 million European senior living fund (the “Fund”), in a joint venture with Capital Bay Group (“CB”), a German based investment and asset manager.

The Fund has a primary focus in Germany, enabling MENA-based investors to participate in this highly desirable asset class, providing resilience and above-average returns in comparison to other European real estate opportunities. The latest two senior care facilities, successfully acquired by GII in mid-2022, are located in Laucha (Saxony-Anhalt) and Holzminden (Lower Saxony), Germany, with more than 200 care beds. The investments qualify as “manage-to-core” assets, with existing cashflow and robust capital expenditure programmes, allowing good medium-term value creation. Both assets are run by major care home operators, in line with GII’s focus on professional and client-centric operations.

The Fund has a strong pipeline and GII has already scheduled further equity deployment in 2023, allowing further deployments in the current dynamic but fragmented European real estate environment.

“German senior care homes are witnessing increasing demand, due to Germany’s population dynamics, which make the sector resilient to varying financial cycles, even in the current economic environment. In Germany, 3.5 million people currently need care, which is expected to grow to 4.4 million people by 2040.” said Mohammed Al Hassan, GII co-founder and co-CEO.

“The liquidity of this asset class increases consistently, with senior care investment in Germany reaching EUR 1.8 billion in the first three-quarters of 2022,” Pankaj Gupta, GII co-founder and co-CEO, added. “The market is very fragmented, with few investment opportunities in this sector. Through our value-addition and aggregation strategy, GII is both addressing a deep societal need - the upgrade of older care homes – and meeting investor needs with a portfolio of professionally-managed senior care facilities which attract a significant liquidity premium.”