Macfarlanes advises significant investor in AXA IM’s €1.9bn European Life Sciences Real Estate Fund

The majority of the capital raised will be invested through Kadans Science Partner, a science park developer that AXA acquired in 2020, and used for new acquisition opportunities in both specialist laboratory space and offices across Europe, as well as for upgrading and repurposing existing assets.

While life sciences is an established real estate asset class in the US, it is a nascent sector in the European market, but one that is now attracting a significant amount of investor interest and capital inflows.

The Macfarlanes team consisted of investment management partner Alex Amos, private equity real estate senior counsel Andrew Hughes and senior solicitor Nicole Mitchell.

Head of the private equity real estate team, Robert Porter, comments: “We are delighted to have assisted with this significant investment into the European life sciences sector. Investors are experiencing sustained growth and outperformance in alternative real estate asset classes, underpinned by long-term structural trends and in the case of the life sciences sector, these trends have been further accentuated by the pandemic.”