The launch of the mercury fund

Today marks the launch of the Mercury Fund, an alternative, umbrella real-estate investment fund, underwritten by Gruppo Cattolica Assicurazioni, CONAD Adriatico, CONAD Centronord and CONAD del Tirreno, and managed by Savills Investment Management SGR.

With an initial real estate portfolio of over 300 million euros, it ranks among the largest Italian investment funds entirely dedicated to the retail sector and aimed at long-term institutional investors.

Savills Investment Management SGR, together with Cattolica Assicurazioni, CONAD Adriatico, CONAD Centronord and CONAD del Tirreno, and in collaboration with CONAD Nazionale, formed the Mercury Fund by selecting  prime and strategic properties as the fund's initial assets.

The aim is to enable the companies within the CONAD system to free up capital to be redeployed for the development of their own activities on the national market, accelerating the growth that has characterized CONAD's strategy in recent years.

The Mercury Fund has the ideal traits of real-estate investments for the Gruppo Assicurativo Cattolica, ensuring stable dividends. this investment is particularly interesting both for the life insurance sector, which – in the context of low interest rates – needs investment strategies different to ordinary bonds, and for the non-life sector.

From an operational point of view, these properties will be leased to each CONAD cooperative involved in the operation, by virtue of long-term leases.

The largest investor is the Gruppo Cattolica Assicurazioni, which acquired 51% of the shares of each of the Mercury Fund's three sub-funds, while each of the CONAD cooperatives has a 49% share of its own fund.

A preliminary loan of 170 million euros has been extended on the fund’s assets, jointly by the two leading Italian banking groups, Banca IMI (Gruppo Intesa) and Unicredit.