Credit Suisse Limits Payouts From $3.5B Real Estate Fund
Credit Suisse is limiting withdrawals from its $3.5B real estate fund after investors requested to pull out cash, the latest in a series of private funds to take this step.
The Swiss investment giant said that investors holding about 13.3% of the fund's shares requested payouts as its net asset value is expected to drop by as much as 10%, Bloomberg reported.
The fund, Credit Suisse Real Estate Fund International, has some of its largest holdings in Boston, Austin, Texas, and Vancouver, Canada. The fund has been struggling for the past five years, down nearly 5% in that period, according to Bloomberg.
“Global valuations were negatively impacted by rising interest rates for CS REF International in its key markets of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany,” Credit Suisse said in the statement to Bloomberg. “Despite healthy rental results at attractive conditions, these were insufficient to offset the negative effects of rising interest rates.”
The share prices of private market funds have adjusted at much slower rates than that of publicly traded REITs as interest rates have risen over the last year, leading investors to try to cash out before values drop.
Other major investment firms have also limited investor payouts in recent months, moves that experts have said could negatively impact commercial real estate markets. Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust fulfilled only 25% of the $5.2B repurchase requests it received last month after beginning to limit withdrawals in December. Also in December, Starwood limited redemptions for its nontraded REIT, and BlackRock deferred withdrawal requests for Q3 and Q2.
