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bne February 2020 Companies & Markets I 17
The amount that anyone entity can own is still being debated but amongst the suggestions are 200 ha for individuals, 1,000 ha for legal entities and a total cap of 0.5% of the whole country. Zelenskiy believes that in the framework of opening the land market in Ukraine, it is necessary to establish the possibility of owning land by one individual or private entity of not more than 10,000 ha. The experts also recommend raising the tax on land to prevent speculative land holding.
While Ukraine has already decided to exclude the politically sensitive issue of allowing foreigners to buy land until the question has been put to a nationwide referendum, the authors list the many benefits to allowing the foreign investors in.
“The reason is that foreign land ownership provides important benefits that, in the case of Ukraine, would include (i) the ability to tap capital, technological know-how, and access
to value chains especially in horticulture and fruits, that are not available locally; (ii) the scope for such investment from the EU to help improve EU market access in return; (iii) the improved transparency associated with FDI from developed countries which are often subject to strict transparency rules; and (iv) higher benefits to landowners in the form of higher land value,” say Deininger and Nivievskyi.
Russia real estate legends to raise €140mn for fund with focus on last mile warehouses for the e-commerce sector
Ben Aris in Berlin
Three of Russia’s best known real estate investors have come together to form L.O.P. Urban Logistic, to develop urban warehousing that targets Russia’s booming last mile e-commerce sector.
The three partners are all serial entrepreneurs of the 1990s and noughties real estate market. Michael Lange is the founder of real estate Investment Company JLL Russia and ran the business for almost two decades during Russia’s boom years.
Jean Francois Ott and Michel Pascalis were working in the same market and founded Orco Property Group and MLP (Multinational Logistic Partnership) respectively.
Collectively the three have been behind developments worth over €10bn of investment over the last two decades,
including iconic buildings, offices and shopping malls in Moscow and St Petersburg.
Now the market and economy is showing the green shoots of recovery, Lange, Ott and Pascalis have teamed up to create L.O.P. Urban Logistic, a Russian Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) with the objective of building a portfolio of warehouses focused on servicing the booming e-commerce and last mile industry with an initial €140 million fund raising campaigning starting in January 2020.
“We intend to rapidly become the premier partner of the Russian e-commerce industry, with a initial focus on Moscow: the largest European city,” Lange told. “While it is one of the most dynamic logistic real estate market, it is still largely under supplied and we see aligned improvements for real
e-commerce is growing at ten times the pace of the real economy, but the penetration of warehousing in Russia is between a half and a quarter of that in other European counties.
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