100M EUR agreement took the prize

Warsaw Business Journal, one of the leading Polish business newspapers has ranked the most important market events of last year and Echo Investment was awarded as “Real Estate Investor of the Year”.

The jury, formed by real estate professionals explained that it was not just the biggest business transaction in Poland, but also the biggest in the whole Central Eastern European region when Echo signed a financing agreement last year with Eurohypo Bank concerning the project “Galeria Echo”, a shopping- and entertainment centre in  Kielce. The total value of all real estate owned by the group – of which Hungarian subsidiary won the international bid for the development of the new Zugló city centre “Mundo” in 2006 – rose by 5.5% during the last business year.

Echo Investment was one of the most successful and most stable real estate investors in the Central Eastern European region even during the economic crisis. They manage successful shopping- and entertainment centre development projects in Poland and in some other Eastern European countries as well.

In 2006, the Hungarian subsidiary of the group won the international bid for the development of  the new town centre in Zugló called “Mundo”. The project would come with 50 Bn HUF investment, several hundred million HUF local tax income and nearly 1,000 new jobs in Zugló.
 
“The value of all real estate owned by Echo rose by 5.5% last year, now totalling more than 1 Bn EUR. This strong financial and professional background guarantees that the quality of the development project that we won by the international bid would be very high” – commented project manager Ahmet Cetin concerning the recently received award.

The real estate professionals in the jury based their decision mainly on the fact that during the current economic and financial circumstances it was Echo Investment that managed the biggest transaction in the whole Central Eastern European region in 2009 by signing the 100M EUR financing agreement with Eurohypo Bank for “Galeria Echo”, a shopping- and entertainment centre project in Kielce.