Urban Partners

We are thrilled that our real estate arm Nrep has been shortlisted in two categories at MIPIM 2025! 🎉 🌿 UN17 Village is a finalist in the ‘Best residential project’ category. It is the world’s first property development to incorporate all 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals into a single, groundbreaking project. Completed in 2024, it  offers a diverse range of homes that foster social inclusion, sustainability, and community engagement, while providing innovative solutions to urban challenges such as climate change and social cohesion. 💡 Our innovation project in Bålsta is a finalist in the ‘Best industry & logistics project’ category. By blending state-of-the-art architecture with pioneering material innovations, it achieves an industry-low carbon footprint of 2.7 kgCO₂/m²/year, while enhancing employee wellness and biodiversity. It sets a new global benchmark for the industry, blending innovation, sustainability and design into a bold vision for the future. The shortlistings underscore our ability to create value by combining ideas, people and capital. Find out more here: https://lnkd.in/d9Shk7jC #MIPIMAwards #MIPIMSummit #SustainableDevelopment #RealEstate

2025 will be a pivotal moment for European debt markets. Lesley Lanefelt, head of Nordic Investments at Velo Capital, credit arm of Urban Partners, spoke to Green Street News for their 2025 European debt outlook. Lesley highlights the central role that alternative financing will play in the stabilisation of the real estate industry in 2025 as sponsors seek to diversify lending sources. Find out more here: https://lnkd.in/gus4Ku3D 

📣 We are delighted to announce a new long-term partnership with Viessmann, which has acquired a minority stake in our firm, cementing a longstanding shared ambition to solve urban challenges through impactful investments! Our partnership is based on synergies of investing across the built environment and scaling technology solutions, while Viessmann has additionally committed to investing in future Urban Partners funds, demonstrating its confidence in our ability to deliver both sustainable #urban impact and attractive returns. 🌎 Jens Christopher Stender, Co-CEO: “To have attracted the long-term support of such a renowned and visionary team is testament to what we have achieved thus far in proving the commercial upside of transforming city environments. With this partnership, we are primed to accelerate our journey towards building the world’s most competent urban investor.” Having partnered up with this independent, global firm, we couldn’t be more excited to embark on 2025 and beyond with all our mission-aligned partners! 🚀 Read the full announcement: https://lnkd.in/dY_XRKPe

🌎 Urban Partners are attending World Economic Forum taking place this week in Davos with our Co-CEO Jens Christopher Stender and Executive Chair Mikkel Bülow-Lehnsby. We are joining a gathering where leaders from the public and the private sector are partnering to find solutions to the many pressing challenges of our time. And to show leadership.   This year's congregation on the mountain falls at a time when the world faces collective economic, social and environmental challenges which more than ever require cross sector collaboration, vision and action. And where utilizing the positive forces of capital is much needed.   🤝 We come to learn, connect, and get inspired. And to share our view on the power of transition capital and how to support our cities and urban ecosystems with leaders from around the world.    To go deeper into these topics, we partnered with our friends at Generate Capital and Scott Jacobs to host an exclusive investor dinner, bringing together visionary leaders who see the green transition as not just the greatest challenge of our time, but also the biggest investment opportunity of our generation.   #WEF25 #UrbanDevelopment #LeadershipAction #Collaboration #TransitionCapital 

Resilience. Quality. Connectivity. Rune Kock, chief executive of Nrep, Urban Partners’ real estate arm, spoke to Green Street News for its Nordics 2025 outlook, outlining the market dynamics in logistics, living and other sectors. The attractive characteristics common across all these sectors are their resilience, asset quality and connectivity. Find out more here: https://lnkd.in/gmxFP9ab 

And it’s a wrap! In 2024 we continued to advance our mission of creating healthy urban environments and thriving communities.   Here are our highlights: 🌱 We were chosen, as one of only 15 firms globally, to pilot SBTi’s new industry guidelines, bringing experience from galvanising climate action and spearheading decarbonising initiatives for buildings through our real estate investor Nrep: https://lnkd.in/esKNvCRC 🌍 Launched our first Impact Report as our Urban Partners platform, showing our increased ESG data coverage, CO2 footprint calculations and efforts to improve urban neighborhoods: https://lnkd.in/dYwfcNtB 🌿 We brought together 150 key decisionmakers at New York Climate Week for a critical event on the sustainable financing of our cities:  https://lnkd.in/eYW3ZFUS 🤼 We had the privilege of gathering our investors for our Annual General Meeting, bringing them to the very inside of our operations within Urban Partners: https://lnkd.in/efPBtZdQ 🤝 And last but not least, we promoted three of our longstanding team members to Partners: https://lnkd.in/dvknhCeN   We cannot wait to embark on what 2025 has in store.   Find out more about Urban Partners here: https://urban.partners/

Looking for engaging holiday podcasts? Here are three insightful episodes featuring Urbanites discussing topics ranging from engaging in urban development and shaping the real estate industry, to decarbonizing the built environment.   1. Foresight's Climate and Energy: Listen to our Co-CEO, Claus Mathisen, as he discusses decarbonizing the built environment in Europe and Japan. https://lnkd.in/dZiEgPCB   2. MIT Center for Real Estate: Insights from our Head of Global Stakeholder Relations, Thure Krarup, on how we work to collaborate and innovate across the real estate industry. https://lnkd.in/dKnHQwS4   3. OECD Podcasts: Dive into achieving climate action and social sustainability with Jesse Shapins, Co-Head of Neighborhood Investments at Urban Partners. https://lnkd.in/d559Y9MJ   Happy listening! 🎧✨! 🎧✨

🚀 We are excited to announce the promotion of three long-standing senior team members to Partners! Big congratulations to Carl-Adam von Schéele Head of Nrep in Sweden; Lesley Lanefelt, Head of Nordic Investments at Velo Capital, and Sanna Gurevich-Weiß (Weiss), COO and Fund Manager at Velo Capital on your well-deserved promotions! All three have consistently displayed exceptional dedication, commitment to our values, and expertise in their respective roles. These promotions align with our commitment to recognizing talent within our organization and reflect our continuation of further strengthening our leadership. Jens Christopher Stender, Co-CEO: “There is no greater pride than welcoming dedicated team members to our Partner group having witnessed their respective achievements over the past number of years. Our people are our most valuable assets, which is why we look forward to supporting each of them in taking their boundless potential to new levels to the benefit of our entire business and the stakeholders that we serve.” Please join us in congratulating Carl-Adam, Lesley, and Sanna on their well-deserved promotions. We are proud to have them as Partners and look forward to their continued contributions to the growth and success of Urban Partners as we work towards building a better urban future. Get to know them a bit better below, and read the full story on our website👉 https://lnkd.in/dvknhCeN

Our Co-CEO, Claus Mathisen, recently joined FORESIGHT Climate & Energy podcast, "The Urban Report" for an intriguing discussion on the diverse approaches to decarbonizing the built environment in Europe and Japan.   As we all know, reducing emissions is a global imperative. However, the methods employed to achieve this goal can vary significantly depending on the region. This podcast episode delves into the complexities of adapting climate mitigation measures to diverse contexts, where one-size-fits-all solutions simply won't cut it.   Urban Partners has invested more than a decade in exploring and deeply understanding how to decarbonize the built environment. By piloting new solutions, implementing decarbonization incentives in every business case and building strong collaboration with various stakeholders, we invest in cities to tackle the climate crisis.   Joining Claus on the podcast are esteemed built environment experts, including Signe Kongebro of Henning Larsen Architects, Jakob Norman-Hansen of BLOXHUB, and renowned Japanese architect Jun Mitsui. Together, they explore the cultural disparities in sustainability approaches between the Nordic countries and Japan. More importantly, they examine what it will take, individually and collectively, to meet our climate goals in the built environment. 🎧 Listen to the podcast: https://lnkd.in/dETVgBsV

Rune Kock, CEO of Nrep and partner in Urban Partners recently participated in an insightful panel discussion "Resilient by design: Future business models for real estate" organized by INREV. Here are some of the key highlights from the panel discussion: 🌱 Embed ESG into core business practice - Integrate decarbonization and broder ESG criteria, using this as a third dimension in risk-return frameworks and fiduciary duties. 💡 Prioritize collaboration and partnerships: Collaboration is key to driving collective sustainability efforts. Align with tenants, partners, and stakeholders to co-develop long-term solutions. 🚀 Leverage innovation for transition: Embrace innovation into investment opportunities. Identify what’s possible to do to decarbonize buildings, embrace brown-to-green strategies, and scale affordable housing, activating levers like carbon pricing to guide decision-making.  Nrep, the real estate arm of Urban Partners has spent two decades investing to become a sustainability frontrunner - finding scalable solutions, piloting new concepts, and building partnerships to decarbonize the industry. Suzy Glass and Sasha Silver, thank you for a great conversation