Gadens has advised the ING Real Estate Entertainment Fund on a A$39m placement and renounceable rights issue –  the fifth A-REIT capital raising Gadens has worked on in the last 18 months. While Gadens has acted on three particularly large raisings for A-REITs to raise over A$1.5bn in that period, the firm is predicting that the next wave of action will come from small to medium-size REITs.
 
"During the darkest days of the GFC only the biggest A-REITs could raise funds on the capital markets but now we are seeing the mid and smaller-cap A-REITs tapping the markets successfully", said Gadens Sydney corporate advisory partner Paul Brown. He said that the GFC had created a pattern of "haves" and "have nots" and noted that since 2008, large REITs have dominated the market as small REITs have lacked institutional support and have been unable to raise money quickly compared to their larger and better established counterparts. “It’s only now that we are starting to see more small and mid-cap REITs being able to enter the capital markets,” he said.
 
In the  next few months, Brown says the market will see more capital raisings coming from smaller REITs . “The smaller funds are slowly working through their debt arrangements and getting that organised, before they can enter the equity market to finish off stabilising their balance sheets,” he said.  He said the market  was unlikely to see more raisings  from large REITs in the near future.

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