AXA IM Alts Tilts Toward Its £6B Real Estate Play, Fast
AXA IM Alts raised a record €18.2B of capital in 2021, up from €14.6B in 2020 — and devoted most of the increase to its real estate plays.
New logistics and residential funds have been the beneficiaries.
In 2021 investors committed €6.3B to AXA IM Alts’ Real Estate Equity strategies, including €2.1B to its core real estate open-ended fund range.
This is up from $3.7B in 2020, with the same allocation of $2.1B to its real estate open-ended fund range.
AXA Alts is pivoting heavily toward real estate and private equity, and away from alternative credit. In 2020 real estate accounted for 25% of the allocation, rising to 34% in 2021. Private equity ended 2021 at 20%, up from 9% in 2020. The alternative credit pillar fell from 64% in 2020 to 45% in 2021.
The growth of the logistics and residential sector-focused funds launched in 2020 is likely to be behind the rapid growth of the property pillar.
In the last year AXA IM Alts closed its fifth-generation development strategy, raising around €800M to deploy primarily into upgrading old office stock into high-quality, sustainable modern workplaces that meet companies' increasingly exacting requirements and focus on quality post-Covid. AXA IM Alts remains particularly active in real estate development, with about €8B of development projects currently in the pipeline and more than €19B of projects executed since 2000.
