Blacklake: New player at the start
The Swiss branch of a German group of companies was co-founded by Christoph Schumacher, the former Global Head of Real Estate at Credit Suisse.
The German real estate service provider Blacklake has founded Blacklake Investment Partners AG in Zug - with the aim of «providing international real estate investors and family offices in the DACH region with access to extraordinary real estate and off-market opportunities», as detailed in a press release. According to Christoph Schumacher, founding partner, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the newly founded company, the company focuses on «real estate opportunities throughout Europe that are not accessible to the broad market due to their complexity or special situations». The company positions itself «as an interface between investment opportunities and capital». It offers organization, structuring, consulting and management of real estate assets, from analysis and implementation to exit preparation. Both classic single deals with individually structured single investments and club deals «for a select group of investors with a uniform understanding of investment and a clear governance structure» are managed. Target groups are Swiss, German and international private clients, single and multi-family offices as well as (semi-)professional investors.
The founding partner is Blacklake GmbH and thus the Blacklake group of companies based in Hamburg, which, according to its own information, has reorganized, repositioned, refinanced and transacted real estate and real estate financing with a transaction volume of around EUR 3 billion since the end of 2022. Its clients include commercial banks, state banks, savings banks, asset and fund managers, institutional investors, project developers, insolvency administrators and entrepreneurial families in Germany.
Christoph Schumacher was Global Head of Real Estate at Credit Suisse Assetmanagement AG from 2017 to 2021 and then moved to Canadian industry giant Manulife Investment Management as Global Head Real Assets, where he remained for a good three years. Another important station in his long career as a real estate manager was the fund provider Union Investment in Hamburg, where he was responsible for the institutional business as Managing Director for around six years. Siro Barino, the former Managing Director of Swiss Deluxe Hotels and Global Head of Media Relations at Credit Suisse Group and Swissair, is also on board as a Founding Partner and member of the Board of Directors at Blacklake Investment Partners. The other board members Hans Volkert Volckens, Karin Gross and Christian Schulz-Wulkow are all Managing Partners of the Blacklake Group.
