Qualitas awarded $1bn mandate from global insto

ASX-listed alternative real estate investment manager, Qualitas has announced it has entered into a mandate with a global institutional investor that will provide for up to $1 billion to be invested into Australian commercial real estate private credit opportunities.

The new mandate, which will be available to Qualitas for investments in tranches, will see the manager’s total committed funds under management (FUM) increase by $220 million to a total FUM of $6 billion.

In the announcement made to the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), Qualitas said the first tranche of $220 million was activated and available for deployment, while the balance of $780 million would be subject to further approvals and conditions and “there was no certainty that it will be activated in whole or in part”.

Also, Qualitas advised it would co-invest up to $30 million over the life of the $1 billion mandate.

“The mandate will be seeded by two residual stock loans (RSLs) for approximately $109 million of immediate deployment with a remit to lend across CRE sectors, The deployment of the remaining $111 million is subject to usual fund investment criteria and conditions,” Qualitas said.

The firm’s group managing director and co-founder, Andrew Schwartz, added that Qualitas had now “significant sources of capital” across its private credit strategies to accelerate deployment momentum given that the market had placed a premium on the provision of liquidity.

“The new mandate means we can continue to capitalise on the continuously increasing opportunities in the market by deploying into attractive risk return investments for the benefit of our investors,” he added.

Schwartz also stressed that Australia’s CRE sector maintained its reputation as secure and stable and continued to draw strong interest from global institutional investors and there was an expanding pipeline of CRE private credit opportunities with an income focus as traditional source of finance reduce their lending in this sector.