The shares will be offered in a range of €15 to €18.50. Thecurrent owners will offer some 15.3m shares - potentially raising€283 million--and another 9.3 million will be in the form of acapital increase. The owners may sell up 3.7 million in anadditional allocation--meaning the total IPO cash raise couldeventually reach €524 million. The price gives a company valuationof €670m to €790m, which compares to its reported net asset valueof €950 million. The discount corresponds to the current average inlisted real estate firms. Final deadline for subscriptions is May6.

GSW owns 49,700 apartments and 3.1 million square meters offloor space in Berlin, valued at some €2.6 billion, and managesanother 17,000 units for third parties. Founded in 1924, it wasoriginally a communal housing company and was acquired in 2004 fromthe Berlin city by the private equity group Cerberus and theWhitehall Funds real estate subsidiary of Goldman Sachs, eachowning 50%. Berlin at the time put a limit on any flotation of 49%of equity and stipulated the group could not be floated before2014. Both the Senate and Lower House of Berlin state have voted tolift these requirements over the last month.

Industry sources told the Handelsblatt newspaper that the IPO isstructured to allow the two owners to sell up to 60% of theirequity stakes in the IPO, while another €140m will flow back intothe company--above the minimum €100m required by the city.