BOSTON—AEW Capital Management, headquartered here, said Tuesday it had closed its AEW Partners VII LP fund with a total of $550 million in equity commitments from limited partners, hitting the fund's hard cap. Fund VII will invest in top-tier markets in North America.

“Almost half of the fund is already invested or committed and we continue to have a very robust pipeline of opportunities,” says Marc Davidson, portfolio manager of the AEW Partners series of funds.  This past September, for example, GlobeSt.com reported that AEW had agreed to pay $134.1 million to acquire 1310 N. Courthouse Rd., a 380,752-square-foot office property in Arlington, VA that MRP Realty and Rockpoint Group put up for sale in February. It's among the acquisitions that have been made through Fund VII, a spokeswoman tells GlobeSt.com.

Fund VII seeks to take advantage of dislocations in the real estate and capital markets by acquiring and recapitalizing assets that are undermanaged but well-located, with distressed capital structures. “We continue to focus on assets and markets that benefit from evolving trends, such as urbanization, changing demographics and the dynamic energy landscape,” says Davidson. “We're excited about the investments we have closed to date, the majority of which were acquired from owners under pressure to sell or recapitalize.”

Separately, AEW Europe, AEW Capital's overseas counterpart, said late last week that it had completed the acquisition of four Parisian office properties from SIIC de Paris for €300 million, or about US $372 million. The deal was done on behalf of an unnamed institutional investor.

Three of the properties are located in the CBD of Paris: 10/12 rue de Tilsitt and 8 rue Lavoisier, both in the 8th arrondissement; and 2 rue du Quatre-Septembre, in the 2nd arrondissement. The fourth is in the suburb of Montrouge. Totaling 290,000 square feet, the properties are 100% leased to tenants including Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, Van Cleef & Arpels, Shibsted (Le Bon Coin) and Mondadori.