Investment giant KKR to launch real estate credit service K-Star in Ireland

During KKR’s recent Investor Day, Ralph Rosenberg, partner and global head of KKR Real Estate, said that as KKR continued scaling its credit business in real estate in Europe, the investment firm was going to migrate the K-Star franchise to Dublin. The brand provides dedicated investment services for KKR’s real estate credit portfolio.

In November 2022, KKR launched its real estate credit business in Europe. Over the following year, it planned to originate up to $2bn (€1.9bn) of loans in the region. According to trade publication PERE News, Ireland was among the markets it would focus on.

KKR’s real estate investment business has been active in Ireland for some time.

In 2015, KKR teamed up with the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund to invest €500m in Activate Capital, a lender aiming to increase housing supply.

Last year, KKR sold buildings one and two of Greenogue Logistics Park to Ingka Group, the largest IKEA franchisee.

K-Star Asset Management LLC (K-Star) was launched by KKR and a team of industry veterans in April 2022. It is a real estate credit investment services platform that provides special servicing, stabilised and traditional loan asset management, underwriting and due diligence services.

According to rating agency Fitch, K-Star's support is to become integral to KKR's corporate real estate investments. K-Star is expected to assume direct special servicing responsibility and oversight of primary servicing for KKR’s direct lending portfolio.

As of the end of 2023, K-Star was named special servicer for 41 multi-borrowers, 16 single-asset single-borrowers, and two commercial real estate collateralised loan obligation securitisations totalling $45.7bn, according to Fitch.

The company was also providing asset management support and primary servicer oversight for KKR Funds' commercial real estate-direct lending portfolio, which comprised 593 non-securitised loans totalling $34.1bn.