Oberschneider secures 50 million euro retail refinancing

TALLINN - Real estate developer Paul Oberschneider, together with joint-venture partner Satnam Europe, on May 17 secured the largest retail refinancing in the Baltic region, securing a 50 million euro loan on their Estonian retail property portfolio, through Swedbank.
The refinancing comes one month after the joint venture opened a 19,500 square meter retail property built for German home and garden chain Bauhaus. The store is Bauhaus’ first site in the Baltic region, and the largest DIY store in Estonia.

“Mr. Oberschneider and Satnam Europe are Swedbank’s long time business partners, and we are pleased to continue the relationship in the coming years. The financing of the new Bauhaus store shows again that when there is trust between the partners and a good business idea, banks are willing to finance new projects,” says Ero Viik, head of Swedbank’s real estate department.
The joint venture consists of six city-center and prime suburban grocery anchored retail sites totaling 75,000 square meters, with a value in excess of 100 million euros. Hypermarket anchors in the portfolio include Scandinavian heavyweights Rimi and Prisma.

Satnam is a private real estate developer, with property, investments and development schemes in the Baltics, mainland Europe, the UK and South Africa. Ruben Gornischeff heads up Satnam’s Baltic operations and is based in Tallinn. Oberschneider has developed and sold real estate in the Baltic region for seventeen years, building and selling a chain of boutique five star hotels, residential apartments, and Ober-Haus Real Estate Advisors, an estate agency with over 350 brokers and 35 offices in five European countries. Ober-Haus was sold in 2007 to a Finnish private equity group.
Bauhaus, established in 1960, is a privately owned German company with over 200 branches in 14 European countries including Germany, Austria, Spain, Croatia, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Finland and now Estonia.