The planned acquisition is subject to contractual agreement and the terms are not disclosed.

BrickVest provides professional investors with easy, cost-effective access to institutional-class real estate investment opportunities and is the only fully regulated online platform of its kind in Europe. Aareal Bank is the second major German bank to acquire a strategic stake in BrickVest, following Berlin Hyp’s investment in October 2017.

Aareal Bank, a leading provider of international commercial property financing, decided to invest in BrickVest because of the latter’s success in building a proven digital model, which it believes will play a key role in shaping the future of real estate investing.

Hermann J. Merkens, CEO of Aareal Bank commented: “BrickVest is a proven start-up with a comprehensive understanding of real estate, capital markets, regulation and technology. Its platform fits perfectly with our innovation and digitization growth strategy. Making such acquisitions is also one of the central thrusts of our Aareal 2020 programme.”

Emmanuel Lumineau, CEO of BrickVest, commented: “We are delighted that Aareal Bank is set to become our second major German banking partner. This is another important growth milestone for our firm and underlines our decision to become an AIFMD-compliant platform from the start. Aareal brings our vision to an international level and is a strong supporter of an open and liquid platform open to all industry players. This is what we have already achieved with our new B2B platform, BrickVest Select, which is aimed at institutional investors committing equity, debt and mezzanine capital to high quality real estate deals.”