National Bank of Abu Dhabi and UK Private Equity Group Launching a Fund

National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD) and Evans Randall, a London- based investment banking and private equity group, have signed a memorandum of understanding to form a joint venture to provide mezzanine investments in European real estate.

The joint venture, which will have a target size of $500 million, will focus on the UK and German markets. Since 2005, Evans Randall has acquired around $7.5 billion of UK and European property investments on behalf of itself and clients (including HBOS’s , Cisco Systems's and Financial Services Authority's headquarters in London).

(Reuters has used the word “fund” to call this transaction, while the companies’ press release has not used the recently unpopular word “fund” even once!)