MARK Capital Management (‘MARK’), a pan-European real estate investment manager, is strengthening its pan-European third-party services offering to existing fund investors as well as new sources of capital.

As part of this strategy, MARK has fully integrated French investment and development affiliates Stepling and Assembly, a process that completed in Q4 2024, and will look to scale Assembly into a pan-European development platform.

Established in 2018 to be the in-house delivery partner for pan-European investment manager MARK, Assembly has managed close to €3bn of projects to date, representing approximately 135,000 sq. m. of commercial and residential floorspace.

Noteworthy projects by Assembly for MARK-advised funds include:

• TOKO, the former Yahoo headquarters redeveloped into co-living and co-working space, acquired by La Française and DWS in separate transactions
• Grand Opera, a former five-star Marriott hotel redeveloped into a mixed office-retail complex, acquired by Pontegadea

A specialist in the repurposing of urban buildings into mixed-use assets, Assembly has also completed asset repositioning strategies for institutional and private investors outside of MARK-advised funds.

Assembly, which is led by CEO Jean-Charles Equoy, has secured a pipeline of ground-up and urban repositioning opportunities as part of the ambitious plans to scale its third-party development management services.

Assembly is expanding its strategy to include the purpose-built student accommodation and logistics sectors. The development platform will look to grow its pipeline further, leveraging third-party capital.

MARK, which remains private and independently owned, has 100 multi-disciplinary employees across nine offices globally, with an in-country presence in Europe’s core economies (the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy).

Jean-Charles Equoy, CEO at Assembly, said: “Assembly has a proven track record of successfully executing brown-to-green themed strategies set around the identification of outdated and undermanaged properties in gateway cities for conversion to best-in-class assets. We have experience in every major asset class – office, residential, retail and logistics – as well as mixed-use.

“Having been the delivery partner for MARK’s value-add urban mixed-use strategy since 2018, creating redeveloped assets that meet the highest modern standards, we have been steadily growing our external client base. We now see heightened demand for a specialist development platform that can partner with institutional and private capital to reimagine existing assets or create new high-quality assets suitable for core buyers.”

Phillipe Bidaud, managing partner and group COO at MARK, said: “MARK’s own pan-European presence has been strengthened by the full integration of investment manager Stepling. Across our urban mixed-use and sector-specific strategies, we see a landscape ripe with opportunity as gateway cities are reshaped by urbanisation, digitalisation and sustainability demands.”

Marcus Meijer, MARK CEO, said: “The scaling of Assembly strengthens our urban mixed-use value-add capabilities while enabling non-clients of MARK to partner with an institutional-quality development platform capable of creating best-in-class assets across all major real estate sectors.”