kopi-C with Stoneweg Europe Stapled Trust CEO: Europe’s real estate recovery, and the discipline behind managing the Trust

Date: April 13, 2026

 

As Europe’s real estate recovery gathers pace, Stoneweg Europe Stapled Trust (SERT) CEO Simon Garing makes the case for why the trust’s repositioned logistics portfolio, data centre strategy ambitions, and approach to management incentives make Europe and SERT a timely conversation for REIT investors.

 

Ask most Singapore investors where they look for real estate exposure, and the answers tend to be predictable: Singapore REITs with malls they shop in, offices they work in, or data centres they have read about.

Look further afield, and the conversation usually turns to the US or China.

Europe is almost always passed over.

Simon Garing thinks this is both an oversight and a missed opportunity.

“The European economy is diverse,” he says.

“It’s almost as big as the US and China collectively, across 27 countries. It provides Singapore investors with a unique opportunity to capture real estate returns that are typically higher than those in the US and China. And it’s predominantly freehold.”

Garing is the Chief Executive Officer of Stoneweg Europe Stapled Trust (SERT), Singapore’s largest European-focused REIT, with €2.2 billion (S$3.2 billion) in assets across >90 predominantly freehold properties in Western Europe.

He makes the case for why the moment for European real estate has arrived, and why the way SERT is managed is as important to the story as the market itself.

 

Europe’s overlooked real estate recovery

In Garing’s view, the past 18 months have redrawn the picture for European real estate in ways that have not yet fully registered with Singapore investors.

He names a few notable events. For one, the European Central Bank began cutting interest rates in mid-2024 and has since brought its deposit rate down to 2%, easing financing conditions across the region.

Germany—the continent’s largest economy—passed a landmark constitutional reform in early 2025, freeing up a €500 billion infrastructure fund and removing the ceiling on defence-related spending. Economists estimate the package could unlock up to €1 trillion in total investment over the coming decade.

“The German government is now prepared to invest over a trillion euros into its economy over the next few years,” Garing notes.

“That’s going to drive stronger GDP growth, and therefore good for rent growth tenant demand.”

European equity markets have already responded: broad indices have risen 10 to 20% over the past 12 to 18 months, and the euro has strengthened significantly against the US dollar since 2022.

SERT’s portfolio sits squarely in the path of these trends.

The trust holds warehouses, distribution facilities, and urban last-mile logistics centres in key European gateway cities including Paris and Amsterdam, and along the key freight corridors linking Germany, the Netherlands, and Denmark.

One of Garing’s favourite examples is Parc de Doc in Paris, SERT’s largest French asset, a 10-hectare property that sits in the area redeveloped for the 2024 Olympics, serviced by fresh infrastructure and anchored by large distribution tenants.

“If you can invest in real estate where the government is spending a lot of money on infrastructure,” he says, “Values go up.”

 

A portfolio enhanced for what comes next

The portfolio Garing is now working with what looks meaningfully different from the one SERT held four years ago. SERT’s portfolio size is €2.2 billion, up c. 60% from the initial €1.4 billion IPO portfolio. At the same time, since 2020, the trust has embarked on a portfolio transformation and sold approximately €400 million of non-core assets over the last three years, reducing its exposure to non-core office, gradually exiting illiquid markets such as Slovakia and underperforming markets such as Finland and Poland, and concentrating its holdings in logistics and industrial assets as well as data centres.

The result, he asserts, is a portfolio where no single tenant accounts for more than 4% of income. The trust has also reported a c.10% rent reversion (meaning rents on renewed leases came in 10% above the expiring rates in the last financial year) across approximately 300,000 square metres of space in the past year.

There is also a forward-looking dimension that sets SERT apart from a standard logistics REIT. The “stapled” in its name refers to a business trust component that sits alongside the conventional REIT structure.

Where a REIT is designed to generate and distribute rental income, a business trust can take on more growth-oriented, development-type activities.

In practice, this has meant investing in a data centre development fund managed by the trust’s new sponsor, SWI Group, which manages one of the largest private equity data centre fund of its kind in Europe, also known as AiOnX.

Currently, AiOnX has five dedicated development sites with about 1.7GW already secured/committed, representing around 10% of Europe’s total current data centre power capacity, based on estimates by S&P Global Market Intelligence.

 

The fee you do not see

For all the reasons Garing makes in favour of European real estate, investing in a REIT whose assets are thousands of miles away requires something specific of the retail investor: trust.

By Garing’s own admission, you cannot drive past the warehouses, speak to the tenants, or form a view on whether the Paris logistics park is as well-located as the manager says it is out of Singapore (although he notes that SERT investors and financial influencers have taken the initiative to visit the assets when on holidays or business in Europe).

What you can evaluate—and what Garing argues most investors do not look at closely enough—is whether the people running the trust are genuinely incentivised to act in your interest.

Essentially, he’s talking about management fees.

Most Singapore-listed REITs pay their management fees partly in units (referred to as “securities” in the case of the stapled structure) through new securities issued directly to the manager. It is a common structure, often presented as a feature, with the idea being that the manager is incentivised to grow the trust’s value because they become securityholders too.

But Garing says this is an unsustainable model in the long term.

“A fee is a fee. It’s an expense,” he says. “Some REITs are paying 10 to 20% more than the headline distribution to create a headline dividend, and that comes at the expense of the capital side.”

SERT currently trades at around €$1.50 per unit—a ~25% discount to its stated net asset value. This means the trust’s securities are priced below what the underlying properties are actually worth.

If management fees were paid in newly issued securities at that market price, those securities would be handed to the manager at a discount to intrinsic value, quietly eroding what each existing investor actually holds, even if the headline distribution figure stays flat.

Instead, the Manager of SERT has opted to receive its management fees in cash, making it a direct expense on the income statement and a more sustainable approach in the long term. According to Garing, it is one of only a few trusts on SGX to adopt this approach.

This philosophy shapes the trust’s broader capital decisions.

SERT has not raised new equity since 2021, and over the past 12 months has been actively buying back its own units on the open market, funded partly by asset sale proceeds.

“My KPIs are not based on an AUM target,” Garing says flatly. “I’m not going to give you a statement such as ‘we’re going to double the size of our REIT in the next two years.’ Investors want to hear that the REIT manager is focused on growing dividends and growing NAV.”

At the moment, the trust’s sponsor, Stoneweg, owns 28% of SERT which makes it deeply aligned with the interests of securityholders. Garing notes that where the security price is trading is a topic that frequently comes up during his regular catch-ups with the Sponsor’s principals.

 

What comes next

SERT enters 2026 with approximately €100 million in cash from recent asset sales, a balance sheet with no debt maturing for five years, and investment grade ratings from both Fitch (recently upgraded) and S&P.

Garing is clear-eyed about where the trust is in its cycle.

“If you bought property two years ago, you’ve probably lost money. It doesn’t matter if it’s the US, China or Europe. But now is a really good time to be investing into European real estate.”

The acquisition focus is logistics assets in the core Western European freight corridors, as well as new ground in Spain and Switzerland, where Stoneweg has an established deal pipeline. The Spanish market is characterised as high-growth, with Switzerland as the safe-haven play.

On the development side, Garing expects that SERT’s €100 million investment to date in AiOnX’s data centre development fund pipeline will drive net asset value per security growth over the coming five to seven years.

The trust also issued formal forward guidance alongside its 2025 results, committing to a distribution per security for the coming year to be at least broadly in line with what it delivered last year. It is the first such guidance, with SERT one of the very few REITs to provide it, and Garing frames it as a statement of confidence rather than a marketing exercise.

He is, characteristically, measured about what it all adds up to.

“The last few years we’ve been tidying up the kitchen,” he says. “Now we’re starting to bake the cake.”

 

About Stoneweg Europe Stapled Trust

Stoneweg Europe Stapled Trust (“SERT”) is a stapled group comprising Stoneweg European Real Estate Investment Trust and Stoneweg European Business Trust. SERT is a growth-ready European logistics and data centre platform with resilient income and a clear path to long-term value creation, backed by a well-aligned sponsor ecosystem. SERT aims to provide sustainable distributions through active asset management and a disciplined approach to portfolio construction.

SERT has a principal mandate to invest, directly or indirectly, in income-producing commercial real estate assets across Europe. SERT is strategically focused on its highest-conviction sectors – logistics and data centres – while selectively pursuing value-add redevelopment opportunities to enhance portfolio quality and earnings resilience. At present, SERT has more than 90% exposure to Western Europe and over 60% exposure to the logistics, light industrial and data centre sectors, with a medium-term goal of increasing its exposure to these sectors to a vast majority weighting.

SERT’s portfolio is valued at approximately €2.2 billion and comprises over 90 predominantly freehold properties located in or near major gateway cities in the Netherlands, Italy, France, Poland, Germany, Finland, Denmark, the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom. The portfolio spans approximately 1.6 million sqm of lettable area and serves more than 700 tenant-customers, providing a diversified income base that supports sustainable distributions.

SERT is an early investor with 6.6% stake in the Sponsor’s data centre development platform, AiOnX, which is expected to drive long-term valuation and earnings upside, subject to development execution and market conditions.

SERT is listed on the Singapore Exchange Limited (SGX counter: SET (Euro) and SEB (SGD)) and is managed by Stoneweg EREIT Management Pte. Ltd. and Stoneweg EBT Management Pte. Ltd. (collectively the “Manager”). SERT’s sponsor is SWI Group, comprising Stoneweg, Icona Capital, its subsidiaries and associates. SWI Group holds a substantial 28% stake in SERT’s stapled securities and wholly owns the Manager and Property Manager.

For more information, please visit www.stonewegeuropestapledtrust.com.sg.

First published on SGX website on 8 Apr 2026

 

About kopi-C: the Company brew

kopi-C is a regular column by SGX Research in collaboration with Beansprout, a MAS-licensed investment advisory platform, that features C-level executives of leading companies listed on SGX. These interviews are profiles of senior management aimed at helping investors better understand the individuals who run these corporations.