The revaluation will be completed on March 1. The next day, the current value will be calculated and the day after the fund will reopen. The statement added that it had set aside euro 203 million ($241 million) to compensate investors for possible losses resulting from the revaluation.
Last year was the first time ever open-ended funds had been frozen in Germany. The year is being seen by analysts and property insiders as a turning point for the open-ended fund market in Germany. Last October, DekaBank, the central financial services provider of the German savings banks, had an open-ended real-estate fund that ran into liquidity problems, and investors lost general confidence in the performance of the funds.
Deutsche's grundbesitz-invest fund was launched in 1970 and at one point had assets of around euro 8 billion ($9.5 billion), making it one of the largest open-ended real estate vehicles on the German market. But between October and the freezing of the fund in December, investors withdrew euro 1.4 billion ($1.6 billion).
Last week it emerged that another German fund manager, KanAm, is weighing a range of strategies to increase liquidity. One of the options is the possible sale of a euro 1.2-billion ($1.4-billion) Paris portfolio and East India Dock in London has already been put on the market with a price tag of £157 million. The fund was frozen in January after withdrawals of euro 700 million ($831 million) threatened its liquidity. Two days earlier, it had been forced to freeze its $579-million US fund for the same reasons.
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