Athens-based Dolphin Capital Partners is targeting €100m for a debut private equity fund focused on leisure integrated real estate opportunities in Greece, Cyprus, Turkey and Croatia.
A new private equity fund launched by Dolphin Capital Partners is aiming to take advantage of what it believes will be a surge of demand for holiday homes in Southeast Europe.
Dolphin Capital Partners LP has been launched by Miltos Kambourides, a former partner at Soros Real Estate Partners, the real estate investment arm of Soros Fund Management, which raised a $1 billion fund in 2001 to invest in properties in Western Europe and Japan.
In an interview, Kambourides told PrivateEquityOnline that although Dolphin is wholly independent he would retain his partnership interest at Soros. Prior to joining Soros, Kambourides was a member of the investment team at Goldman Sachs’ Whitehall Fund. He is joined at Dolphin by fellow principal Pierre Charalambides, a former investment banker at JP Morgan.
The leisure-integrated real estate sector involves the combination of residential units, such as villas and apartments, with a leisure component, typically golf courses or swimming pools. Such developments are popular with those wanting to retire to “a place in the sun” and have become commonplace in Spain and Portugal in Europe and Florida in the US.
“Over the next five to ten years, Southeast Europe will see a surge in this market similar to that witnessed in Spain and Portugal in the 1990s,” said Kambourides. He claimed Dolphin had first-mover advantage in the region, and had already identified investment opportunities to which 75 percent of the target fund capital could be allocated.
Kambourides said Dolphin had elicited preliminary prelaunch commitments from potential investors such as private banks and high net worth individuals with whom it is currently in discussions. Law firm Baker & McKenzie is acting as legal adviser to Dolphin on the raising of the fund, which is structured as a Jersey-based limited partnership.
Kambourides said Dolphin would ultimately seek to add to its Athens office with an on-the-ground presence in the other three target geographies of Cyprus, Turkey and Croatia.