The top ten owners of shopping centres in Romania hold 940,000 square metres in lettable area, that is almost 100 hectares of malls, in which they invested about 2 billion euros, with more than half of the money taken from banks.
This business, where Romanian entrepreneurs managed to stay on the market and compete with international companies, generates 200-250 million euros in rents a year for the top ten owners, a ZF analysis reveals.
Iasi-based Iulian Dascalu remains the biggest owner of shopping centres in Romania with a portfolio of 175,000 square metres that can be let in the four Iulius-branded malls in Iasi, Timisoara, Suceava and Cluj.
Other top Romanian owners are Dan Adamescu, who controls Unirea Shopping Centre projects in Bucharest and Brasov and Gabriel Popoviciu, owner of the Baneasa Shopping City in northern Bucharest.
However, breathing down Dascalu's neck is not a Romanian entrepreneur but the Austrians at Immoeast, who bought three operational shopping centres - Polus Cluj, Euromall Pitesti and Armonia Arad in 2006 and 2007, which total together 127,000 square metres in lettable area. The Austrians are the only ones threatening Dascalu's position, after all. The owners of the biggest shopping centres in Bucharest, Sparkassen Immobilien (Sun Plaza) and AFI Europe (Cotroceni Park) went straight into the top ten of mall owners, which also includes Turkish-held Anchor Grup (Bucuresti Mall and Plaza Romania), BelRom (European Retail Park Bacau and Focsani) Omilos (ERA Oradea and Iasi) and Argo (Shopping City Sibiu and Suceava).
The top ten owners of shopping centres in Romania hold 940,000 square metres in lettable area, that is almost 100 hectares of malls, in which they invested about 2 billion euros, with more than half of the money taken from banks.
This business, where Romanian entrepreneurs managed