Immoeast pays 5m euros to remain sole shareholder of West Gate Craiova mall

Austria's Immoeast, the real estate investor with the biggest exposure to the Romanian market, with around 1bn euros in its portfolio, paid almost 5m euros to remain the sole shareholder in Kylos Media firm, developing West Gate mall of Craiova, an investment put at 100m euros. "Immoeast paid almost 5m euros for the 10% stake held by Trio Holding company in the Craiova project, with Trio to be the project's project manager," real estate market sources told ZF. According to the initial agreement, Immoeast should have bought the entire Craiova project upon completion. In the past year, though, the Austrians have decided to become sole shareholder in several partnerships. Immoeast and Trio started developing the Craiova project as early as 2007 and the mall was due to be completed last year. The crisis and the financial difficulties the Austrians coped with made them halt investments in the project, though, in a stage where the structure of the building had been 95% raised. "Our target is to resume the development of frozen projects such as Euromall Galati and West Gate Craiova. This will happen as soon as we reach a comfortable pre-rental level," Vlad Dumitrescu, development manager of Immoeast, has recently told ZF.