European Real Estate Debt: Strategic Openings in a Shifting Landscape
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At the 2025 PERE Europe Debt Roundtable, leading managers explored the evolving landscape for private real estate debt amid geopolitical disruption and macroeconomic uncertainty. The panel included Adam Baghdadi (Arrow Global), Shaun Connery (Affinius Capital), David Mortimer (ICG), and David White (LaSalle).
Adam Baghdadi, head of lending solutions at Arrow Global, emphasised the opportunity created by market fragmentation and variable bank lending. “Risk appetite and lending outcomes are very locally driven. That determines the flavour of deals country-by-country and the asset classes we lend against,” he said. With traditional lenders inconsistent across jurisdictions, Arrow sees a strong opening for alternative credit strategies, particularly in regions underserved by banks.
He also pointed to renewed activity in construction financing: “A lot of borrowers realised that rates aren’t about to fall sharply, and construction costs are rising… they decided to get on with it and build.” This momentum has shifted toward southern Europe, where Arrow is actively deploying capital.
On the pricing front, Adam highlighted the appeal of short-term bridge lending: “A high-turnover bridging book can make low-teens returns.” He also offered a note of caution on market volatility: “Prices tend not to stabilise during trade wars,” underlining the need for measured, long-term thinking in credit.
For institutional investors, the message is clear: while challenges persist, European real estate debt presents compelling, strategically targeted opportunities, particularly for those equipped to navigate local complexity and deploy capital with precision.
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Adam Baghdadi
Managing Director, Lending
Adam Baghdadi is a Managing Director in the Arrow central investment team focused on lending. He has over 13 years of investment experience in credit, lending and corporate finance.
Previously Adam was a member of the investment team at Sixth Street in London, where he worked across a range of credit and special situation transactions with a focus on hard asset and real estate backed opportunities. Prior to that Adam was an investment analyst at HBK, a global credit-oriented multi-strategy hedge fund, where he worked across a range of corporate and structured credit strategies. Adam started his career at Morgan Stanley in the UK Investment Banking team, where he worked across a range of public M&A, takeover defence and debt and equity capital markets transactions.
Adam holds an MA in Economics and Management (1st class honours) from Oxford University.