French private equity firm Ardian still sees opportunity in office properties, especially in Europe and is considering its first United States real estate investments, said Stéphanie Bensimon, its head of real estate.
Office property investments remain viable, even as the sector struggles globally as companies work to get employees back to their workplaces, in Europe because most of a lack of good supply in the hearty of their business districts, Bensimon told CoStar News in an interview at the Mipim conference in Cannes, France.
"Of course, we are living a big crisis in the office sector, especially because there is a lot of offices that don't fit in terms of location and in terms of quality of the space," she said. "But we feel like, especially after Covid, most of the companies had to rethink their occupation, how they want to occupy, how they want to attract their talent. And we've been discussing a lot, debating on whether people should go back or not.'
Looking the at return-to-office numbers now, Bensimon said, "we see that people most of the time are back to the office in Europe, which is not necessarily the case everywhere".
As for the United States, Bensimon said the country is on the radar of Paris-based Ardian, which already has investments in infrastructure and other sectors there.
"Obviously, real estate will be a natural expansion for us at some point," she said.
Bensimon added, "We are looking to expand in the US also, because we have a strong base of US investors as a group. And so this is definitely a place where are monitoring. We are looking to expand and hopefully, at some point, get a presence over there to be, like, more global on the real estate side."