NuCO2 offers micro-bulk beverage carbonation solutions to quick service restaurants and convenience stores that provide fountain beverages to their customers. Through this investment, Praxair aims to expand its product offering for establishments selling draught and craft beers, giving them the possibility to include nitrogen generations and blending control systems.

“NuCO2 offers a compelling value proposition for beverage carbonation. We plan to continue to grow. the business in the United States, enhance distribution efficiency utilizing Praxair’s competencies in logistics, and extend NuCO2′s offerings to customers in other regions of the world,” said Executive vice president Eduardo Menezes (pictured). 

Praxair seems to have made a smart investment as NuCO2 will generate sales of $250 million in 2013 and an annual EBITDA of $115 million. Yet the deal will be neutral or have a minor positive effect on Praxair’s earnings per share for 2013. It will be completed in Q1 of this year after going through the process of being approved by regulatorsThe deal is expected to be neutral or slightly accretive to Praxair’s earnings per share in 2013, is expected to close in the first quarter of 2013 and is subject to regulatory approval and normal closing conditions.

At the end of 2012, Praxair, whose market value is of $32.7 billion, announced $152 million in cash and equivalents and operting a short and long term debt of $7.36 billion. The company generated $11.2 billion in revenue and net earnings of $1.69 billion, which translated into #5.61 per diluted share. 2013 full year revenues are forecast to reach $12 billion and per share earnings of $5.85-6.10, all up from the 2012 values. The market currently values Praxair at $32.7 billion. This values the firm at 2.7 times 2013′s annual revenues and 18-19 times annual earnings. Praxair pays a quarterly dividend of $0.60 per share for an annual dividend yield of 2.2%.

Currently, about 98% of the gross leasable area is leased with an average of 8 years till the contracts expire. Mitiska Ventures has announced that full occupancy will be achieved by the end of the first semester of 2013.

The value of the transaction has not been made public.

Karel De Bondt, real estate director for CEE at Mitiska Ventures, believes Romanian retail will be on an upward trend, regardless of the overall economic situation of the country:

“In our opinion the perception of Romania and of Romanian politics does not correctly reflect reality. As is the case for Europe and the world as a whole, the economic situation in Romania has changed. However, retailers are still expanding and good projects continue to perform well. The InterCora portfolio is a very good example of this,” he stated.

Along with this real estate transaction, the Belgium-based group has reached an agreement with Alpha Property Development, the local representative of InterCora Group, which implies further investments in this Eastern European country.

“We believe together we are very well positioned to further enlarge our asset base with high quality developments. It is our intention to identify comparable country partners and portfolios in other European countries,” added Karel De Bondt.

The value of the transaction involving the acquisition of this property from ACRON Group has not been disclosed. Executed by Transwestern Investment Management under the direction of Collin Comer, managing director and Jonathan Napper, vice president, this acquisition is a strategic move for its new owner.

“This acquisition provided the opportunity to acquire a true Class A asset in one of Houston’s strongest submarkets. Through this investment, our client will achieve strong returns with the potential for significant upside in the future,” Napper explained.

The Reserve at Westchase was already entirely leased at the time of the acquisition. It is located in one of Houston’s fastest growing submarkets, Briarpark Drive between Westheimer Road and Richmond Avenue, east of Beltway 8.

As part of the transaction, Transwestern Investment Management assumed an existing loan expected to take five to six months.

“TIM and its client were extraordinary in obtaining, organizing and processing the loan servicer’s required due diligence,” said Bernard Branca, senior vice president with CBRE, who represented the seller. “As such they were able to obtain approval from the loan servicer after 44 days of making loan assumption application, which allowed us to close before the end of the year.”

Transwestern Investment Management, a privately held investment advisory firm specializing in designing and executing highly focused investment strategies for corporations, institutional investors and high-net-worth individuals, has thus added a first class commercial property to their asset portfolio. Given the high demand for this future office building and the area where it is located, it will fit well into their investment strategy of providing superior risk-adjusted returns.

Not a spanking new development, HotPads launched in 2005 to help users with rentals. The platform expanded to include sales and even vacation offerings subsequently, and with some success. In direct competition with sites like Apartments.com, Craigslist and, even giant Zillow, HotPads is actually the sixth acquisition by Zillow in the last two years. Spencer Rascoff, CEO of Zillow, offered this via MarketWatch:

“This acquisition represents a significant step-change for Zillow Rentals, allowing us to dramatically increase the number of leads we send to landlords. HotPads has a younger, complementary and rental-focused audience. Now Zillow will become even more relevant to consumers at the beginning of their real estate life cycle. In addition, by acquiring an amazing engineering team, with a deep understanding of how people search for rentals and become tenants, we expect to accelerate our innovation and monetization of our rental marketplace.”

At close yesterday 26.23 +0.12 (0.46%) Zillow stock tumbled last month on the news of SEC disclosures concerning correspondences between the SEC and Zillow’s CEO Spencer Rascoff. Further stock price tail-off occurred when the company’s quarterly projections failed to meet analyst expectations. Yesterday, despite the news of Zillow’s HotPads buy, The Street downgraded “Z” stock from buy to sell due in large part to weak operating cash flow.

TAG was one of the favorites of this bid, along with equity investor Lone Star, both competing for the acquisition of two separate portfolios of properties that include 12,000 flats in former East Germany, together with several commercial properties. While TAG acquired the residential portfolio, the commercial property unit is still up for grabs but is expected to be bought soon by Lone Star.

The combined transaction is expected to surpass the second largest one of earlier this year, the acquisition of 22,000 flats by a group led by Patrizia Immobilien from public-sector bank LBBW, valued at EUR 1.4 billion (USD 1.78 billion) . These transactions are part of the German government efforts to divest assets, a goal it has been actively working towards since 2008.

The sale of the commercial arm of TLG is expected to be finalized by the end of the year at the latest. The German finance ministry said the deal is in its final phase and should be completed in a few weeks.
TAG representatives stated on Monday that, in order to refinance the equity purchase price of EUR 218 million and to finance other smaller acquisitions, the company would issue up to 30 million new shares The net debt included in the deal was of EUR 253 million. The estimated worth of the newly issued shares is of about EUR 250 million (based on Friday’s closing share price of EUR 8.39.)

Properties in Germany are currently drawing international investors as they have not been subjected to the same trend of prices going up and down at incredible speeds as it happened in other European countries, such as Spain or Ireland. On the contrary, German property values have seen a stable increase over the past few years.

Rosemont Realty, LLC has reportedly acquired One Warren Place and Two Warren Place in Tulsa, Okla. Formerly owned by Parmenter Realty Partners, the two properties are the two largest in Oklahoma. No terms were disclosed at the the amount of the sale.

Rosemont Realty already owns or manages some 16 million plus square feet of commercial office space valued at over $1.5 billion.  This deal adds a total of more than one million additional feet of prime office space to Rosemont’s portfolio. According to the news release, the two properties are leased at 96 percent occupancy currently.

Located at 6100 South Yale, Tulsa, the two towers are part of the 52-acre Warren Place complex there. One Warren Place is a 20 story affair of nearly half a million square feet, while Two Warren consists of another 487,000 plus square feet spread across 19 floors. Daniel Burrell, CEO of Rosemont Realty, offered this about the sale:

“Rosemont is strategically entering the Tulsa market with the acquisition of One Warren and Two Warren. Tulsa’s fast growing energy and natural gas sectors along with its increasingly diverse local economy makes this a compelling investment opportunity for the company.”

Rosemont Realty has acquired nearly four million square feet of Class A and Class B office space in the last year. For more information about this or other deals by Rosemont Realty, please visit their website or view the original press release here.

Michael F. Foust, CEO of Digital Realty, commented on the move; ”We are very pleased to complete the acquisition of our first Hong Kong property with Savvis, our joint venture partner. We look forward to redeveloping the facility to provide enterprise-quality data centre space to this important global market.” The new data center, located at Tseung Kwan O Industrial Estate in New Territories, is about 12 miles outside downtown Hong Kong. According to the news, the facility is capable of handling on the order of  5.76 megawatts of IT load capacity overall. Mark Smith, managing director, Asia, for Savvis, added this:

“The completion of this acquisition with Digital Realty helps us further address demand for managed services, colocation and cloud solutions in the high-growth Hong Kong market. Through this joint venture, Savvis will utilize capacity within the facility to provide our customers with network, managed IT and cloud services.”

Digital Realty’s so called Turn-Key Flex data centre, uses a modular approach for solving secure, enterprise quality data space.  Designed for flexibility, reliability and efficiency, the Turn-Key Flex facility has its own dedicated electrical and mechanical infrastructure.

Digital Realty Trust, Inc. is focused on customer driven data centre solutions, while Savvis, a CenturyLink company, is a global leader in cloud infrastructure and hosted IT solutions.

The apartment community is a 402-unit property, first built in 1968, and has received significant renovation over the past ten years. Crystal View offers residents tennis courts, a fitness center, a basketball court, a movie room, and a club house. The units are designed to be affordable for middle-market workforce and can accommodate their families.

Crystal View swimming pool area

The companies purchased the property through a PRG institutional real estate fund, financed with assumable tax-exempt bond financing. “PRG and its principals have more than 30 years’ experience in owning and operating market-rate and affordable housing,” said Alex Saunders, PRG managing director.

MGPG senior vice president, Justin Smith believes the partnership will be a fruitful one. “Our strong operating platform combined with Phoenix Realty Group’s experience and resources make this an excellent partnership to add to our existing market-rate and affordable housing properties.”

Crystal View Apartment Community

Phoenix Realty Group is a national real estate investment manager that continually invests in value-added multifamily properties. It currently manages investments in $2 billion of real estate developments and acquisitions. Its investments include multifamily units in Southern California, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

MG Properties Group has acquired 69 communities with a total of 10,900 units. The company holds over $1.3 billion in total asset value. It currently owns units in California, Washington, and Arizona.