Sonae Sierra sells troubled shopping mall in southern Romania to local investor

Turkish-Romanian businessman Omer Susli, the owner of interior decoration stores Homelux, bought the River Plaza shopping mall in Râmnicu Vâlcea, in southern Romania, from the Portuguese real estate developer Sonae Sierra, Profit.ro reported.

Susli also recently purchased the Vitantis Shopping Center in Bucharest from the investment fund Revetas Capital, in a transaction of about EUR 20 mln.

This time, Susli has taken over River Plaza Mall from Sonae Sierra for a symbolic price of EUR 1, but he also took over the developer’s loan contracted from BRD-SocGen.

The shopping mall has an occupancy rate of 80%, but this is useless when there is no traffic, Syusli stated, implying that River Plaza’s financial situation has deteriorated significantly during the pandemic.

The shopping mall reported EUR 1.7 mln revenues and EUR 1.2 mln losses in 2020, after comparatively smaller losses in the year before.

The Portuguese developer thus marks its first exit on the Romanian market.

Sonae Sierra, who also owns the ParkLake mall in Bucharest, entered the Romanian market in 2007 through the acquisition of River Plaza mall from the Romanian company Setler Mina, in a transaction of EUR 42 mln.

River Plaza Mall, which opened in November 2006, has a leasable area of ​​11,449 square meters, spread over five floors, nearly 100 shops and restaurants and 203 parking spaces. The most important tenant of the mall is Carrefour Market.

(Photo: Yunkiphotoshot/ Dreamstime)