Von der Heyden Group, an international investment firm on the European real estate market (Valletta, Malta), has opened its first regional office in Kyiv and plans to invest EUR 50 million in commercial and residential property in Kyiv and Lviv during its preliminary phase.
“Von der Heyden Group… has opened new offices in Kyiv in Q4 2019 to establish multi-million euro investments in Ukraine. The group… will invest around EUR 50 million in commercial and residential properties in Kyiv and Lviv during its preliminary phase, aiming to increase this to up to fourfold in its mid-term portfolio expansion in a favourable market,” the company said in a press release.
According to the report, the Von der Heyden Group has appointed a local expert team, formed to expand the group’s real estate portfolio led by Dmitry Havrylenko who assumes the role of Chief Executive Officer in Ukraine. Havrylenko until recently held the position of National Director and head of the Ukrainian office of global investment management firm, Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL). Ex-Head of Capital Markets at the Kyiv office of Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) Tatyana Yarmolitskaya joined the Von der Heyden Group as Investment Director. Ex-Associate with the tax practice of leading Ukrainian law firm, Arzinger, also joined the team as Legal & Tax Director.
The Ukrainian architectural company Archimatika (Kyiv) has opened the office Archimatika Norge AS. in Oslo, Norway, the company said on its Facebook page.
“We are pleased to announce that Archimatika has opened an office in Oslo – Archimatika Norge AS. Our Norwegian department consists of nine experienced architects, but it will have all Archimatika resources in Kyiv with more than 250 architects, designers and engineers,” the company noted.
According to the report, Archimatika Norge AS will provide services of urban planning, designing of residential, office, commercial real estate, territory planning, research, technical supervision, development of technical documentation and supervision of construction projects.
Currently, the office in Norway has already taken up several projects at various stages, including, in particular, territory planning and preparation of documents.
Archimatika was founded in 2005 by architects Dmytro Vasilyev and Oleksandr Popov.
According to the company, more than 7.6 million square meters of residential and public buildings were designed during its operation. The project portfolio at the design stage as of December 2019 consists of more than 3.5 million square meters.
The company employs 270 people. Currently (December 2019), the company has three offices in Kyiv, Moscow, and Oslo.
The total absorption in the high-quality office real estate market in Kyiv in July-September 2019 increased by more than 70% compared to the same period in 2018 and amounted to near 46,000 square meters, according to a press release of Colliers International (Ukraine), the international consulting company.
“In general, during the first nine months of 2019, the volume of transactions amounted to about 131,000 square meters, which already exceeds the results of entire 2018. According to the results of the third quarter, IT industry companies (48%) had the main share of the total absorption, as well as companies from industry and energy (33%),” Colliers said.
According to the company, new offer in the third quarter amounted to 10,000 square meters, or some 15% of the declared for commissioning in the second half of 2019.
According to Colliers, developers announced five facilities with a total area of about 57,000 square meters for going live by the end of 2019.
“A significant part of the office space under construction already has signed preliminary lease agreements. This trend is one of the indicators of increased demand and the formation of the landlord market. Given the shortage of high-quality office space, the vacant space of facilities with a good location and concept is quickly absorbed by the market,” Colliers said.
According to company analysts, rental rates in Kyiv offices in the third quarter remained at the level of the previous quarter. In particular, the range of base rental rates in Class A business centers amounted to $22-30 per square meter, in the class B centers it is $14-21, and in the class C centers it is $9-13.
Modest growth is projected during the first half of 2020.
Italy’s Ernest Airlines has opened an office in Kyiv in Podilsky district, an Interfax-Ukraine correspondent reported on Friday.
The company’s new office will also host a call center.
Along with this, the airline announced the opening of a new Ernest Airlines base at Sikorsky Kyiv airport (Zhuliany) in April 2020, the launch of five new routes between Ukraine and Italy: Kyiv-Venice, Kyiv-Bari, Kyiv-Trieste, Lviv-Bologna and Milan-Odesa.
Thanks to the new office in Ukraine, Ernest Airlines plans to strengthen and expand cooperation with Ukrainian travel agencies and tour operators.
As reported, Ernest Airlines plans to invest EUR 100 million in Ukraine in two years and to deploy two aircraft in Kyiv in 2020.
A large Brazilian IT company, Stefanini, with the value of assets of $1 billion, has announced expansion of its operations in Europe and opening of its office in Ukraine, the company has said in a press release. “Our international presence places us in a privileged position to offer and deliver new services in all corners of the world. We want to expand our operations in Europe, and Ukraine will be our next stop,” Stefanini’s global CEO Marco Stefanini said.
According to Stefanini, one of the factors that influenced the decision by Ukraine, in addition to the thriving IT market, is that 78% of workers in the sector have intermediate or high English proficiency.
“As a global company, it is essential to work with multilingual professionals. Our expectation by the end of the year is to have a staff of 50 in the Kyiv office that is most focused on support and application development,” Stefanini said.
According to the press release, recent reports show that Ukraine has more than 1,000 IT companies and employs about 100,000 workers. With rapid growth in this segment, the expectation according to research studies is that the number of technology workers will double by 2020.
Stefanini was founded in 1987. The company currently has more than 74 offices in 40 countries in America, Europe, Africa, Australia and Asia.
The new supply of offices in Lviv to be commissioned in 2019-2021 will be 176,100 square meters, which is almost comparable to the current offer, UTG consulting company (Kyiv) has told Interfax-Ukraine. “By mid-2019, the growing demand for office space, triggered mainly by favorable conditions for the development of the IT sector, led to a shortage of quality space in the market and, as a consequence, to a decrease in vacancy to 2.2%, an increase in rental rates and a surge in developer activity,” UTG analyst Oksana Havrylevych said.
According to her, office premises with a leased area of 56,400 square meters are expected to be commissioned in 2019 (33.6% of A class, 66.4% of B class), 31,500 square meters in 2020, and 88,200 square meters in 2021.
“With the timely commissioning of the declared facilities by the end of 2021, the total leased office space will be about 378,000 square meters, which corresponds to 500.8 square meters per 1,000 citizens, which may bring the Lviv office market to the phase of oversupply,” she said.
