S IMMO AG, a subsidiary of CPI Property Group, has sold the Hoto Business Tower. This is the fourth office property that CPI Property Group has sold in Croatia in a short period.
Namely, it first sold Eurocenter to Atlantic Group in December 2023, then in February of this year the Grand Center Office building located on Radnička Street in Zagreb, and in March, Zagrebtower, which was purchased by OTP Group.
The buyer of the Hoto Business Tower is Miha Ažman, a Slovenian entrepreneur who has not been publicly exposed in Croatia until now. He comes from a wealthy Slovenian family and was once the CEO of BMW Group Slovenia. In Croatia, Ažman has owned the Hypo-Alpe-Adria bank complex on Slavonska Avenue for several years, and in Slovenia, his family also owns the Tartini hotel in Piran and the Rotonda business complex in Ljubljana.
The Hoto Business Tower is the first skyscraper built since Croatia’s independence. It was built by Tomislav Horvatinčić and then sold to Hypo Alpe-Adria Immobilien in 2005 along with the Hoto Castellum center. Later, it was purchased for 71.6 million euros by the German real estate management company Signa, and CPI Property Group, through its subsidiary S IMMO AG, became the owner of this business skyscraper in 2020. At that time, S IMMO stated that they were expanding into the office market due to accelerated demand for premium offices in this region and explained that this was a logical continuation of the company’s strategy. However, the strategy has evidently changed since then, as the company has sold four office buildings.
It is assumed that these transactions are a result of the CPI Group’s balance sheet adjustment, as the company must reduce its debt to a desirable level below 40 percent after a series of acquisitions.
CPI Group also recently sold Sunčani Hvar to a buyer from Abu Dhabi, Eagle Hills. The group is owned by Czech entrepreneur Radovan Vitek, who is on the Forbes list.
