Highlights from the INREV expert seminars in London

If you attended INREV’s seminars in London on 10 and 11 October, we hope you had an insightful experience learning from leading experts and meeting fellow industry professionals. If you missed it, here’s a quick summary.

This year’s Advanced Tax Seminar in London attracted a record number of participants interested in understanding the latest tax issues impacting non-listed real estate investment. Exploring the theme of “Tax beyond compliance”, the seminar examined the drivers leading increasing numbers of investors and investment managers to adopt policies that go beyond current legal requirements to reduce risk and future-proof their tax structures. Here are some of the highlights:

• A high-level overview of the changing tax landscape and its impact on behaviour by Edwin Visser, Partner, Tax Policy EMEA at PwC
• A specific discussion on the top newly proposed, increasingly complex tax legislation by Antoine Badot, Partner, Alternative Investments, KPMG Luxembourg
• An insightful session on the impacts of fund structuring by Friederike Werner, Director of Product Development at DWS.
• A panel discussion  moderated by Keith O’Donnell, Managing Partner, International & Corporate Tax at ATOZ on the avoidance of investment structures domiciled in entities' non-compliant jurisdictions, adherence to the INREV code of tax conduct and use of increasingly detailed side letters covering tax issues

At the Finance and Operations Seminar, we addressed the impact of ESG on reporting and valuation, operational approaches to due diligence, and debt refinancing and restructuring. John Ravoisin, Audit & Advisory Partner of Real Estate at PwC served as the moderator. Highlights include:

• An overview of how technology and AI are reshaping the world of real estate and the influence of distributed/remote work on the office and housing markets by Dror Poleg, author and speaker
• A discussion on how investors perform periodic monitoring and use reporting dashboards to get a clear overview of each investment, helping them with due diligence
• A deep dive into the integration of ESG into valuations by Martijn Onderstal from Savills, explaining the role of valuers and the use of a dedicated ESG toolkit, a scoring model, and the collaborative efforts of various stakeholders
• A panel discussion on the investors’ view represented by Andrea van Buren at MN and Joseph Smith at UBS, and the investment manager’s point of view represented by Jaap van der Bijl from Altera.
• Constantin Sorlescu, Director of Professional Standards at INREV, spoke with Renaud Breyer at EY and John Fahey at CBRE IM about the way ESG is being integrated into and is reshaping investor reporting and how INREV can support the industry via the newly developed ESG SDDS.
• A presentation on how the operationalisation/hotelification of real estate is impacting today’s market by Nicole Mitchell, Head of Real Estate Strategy and Policy at Macfarlanes
• Christina Forrest at CBRE IM focused on the availability of debt in the real estate sector today, how these loans can be managed in turbulent market conditions, and the different ways to source debt

We thank all participants, speakers and panellists for attending and contributing to the success of these events. Check out the 2024 INREV events calendar for the next edition of these seminars, as well as other upcoming events.