About 90 per cent of the company’s property holdings are located in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö and Västerås – four locations with strong growth and high demand for premises. Kungsleden also runs a number of investment projects and is a financially stable company with good prospects.
Real estate crisis and stock market launch
Kungsleden’s story began when Sweden was hit by a serious financial and property crisis in the early 1990s. The crisis included a significant real estate value collapse, which led to the banks possessing property holdings that they wanted to get rid of.
Gota Bank (which for a few years in the 1990s was one of Sweden’s five major banks) was hit hard by the crisis. The bank’s unsecured receivables were therefore placed in a subsidiary with a real estate company that was assigned the task of managing the bank’s mortgage property. And so Kungsleden was born.
In 1997, the company was bought by institutional investors and two years later the stock was listed on the stock market. At that time, Kungsleden owned properties worth SEK 5 billion.
High transaction rate and new strategy
At the beginning of the 2000s, Kungsleden’s focus was to expand within social properties. Realia and the Nordic Modular Group were acquired and half of the subsidiary Hemsö was sold. Following the acquisition of an office portfolio in Västerås, the Board decided in 2013 to adopt a more long-term focus.
A new strategy was developed focusing on long-term ownership, active management, refinement and development of commercial properties in selected growth areas. This became the starting point for the emergence of today’s Kungsleden with the vision to create attractive and sustainable places. Biljana Pehrsson became CEO the same year.
Geographic focus with an emphasis on offices
Between 2013 and 2019, acquisitions worth SEK 17 billion and divestments amounting to SEK 7 billion were made with the aim of creating a geographically focused portfolio primarily including high-quality office properties. The focus is on growth markets in Sweden – with an emphasis on Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö and Västerås.
The quality and value of Kungsleden’s properties have also been enhanced through ambitious development projects driven by tenant needs and market trends.
In 2018, the new stable and long-term Kungsleden was well-established. Since then, Kungsleden has continued to fine-tune, develop and refine its property portfolio while increasing focus on operations, management and customer relations. In 2019, a decision was made to establish its own operating organisation, and in the same year Kungsleden was upgraded to Investment Grade by the rating agency Moody’s, partly because its loan-to-value ratio in 2019 had been reduced to 46 per cent.
Merger with Castellum AB
In the end of 2021, Kungsleden became a subsidiary of Castellum and on December 3, 2021, the company’s shares were delisted from Nasdaq Stockholm.
On December 8, 2021, Biljana Pehrsson, CEO of Kungsleden between 2013-2021, became CEO of Kungsleden’s parent company Castellum AB, while Ylva Sarby Westman, former vice president and CFO of Kungsleden, became the new CEO of Kungsleden and entered the role as vice president and CFO of Castellum AB.