Property Week - Self Storage unbreakable under economic pressures
July 2011

Please click on the image below to read this article in full

Space Mission: The storage starved Britons who pay £350m a year for a place to keep their essentials
July 2011 - The Mail

Please click on the link below to read this article in full 

Shurgard Europe acquires its joint venture partners’ interests in 72 properties for € 172 million

Brussels - On March 2, 2011, Shurgard Europe, a Public Storage European joint venture, paid € 172 million to acquire the 80% interests it did not already own in two joint ventures that own a total of 72 self-storage facilities (353.000 square metres of storage space) in all seven countries in which Shurgard Europe operates. Public Storage provided the funding for the acquisition.

About Shurgard Europe

Shurgard Europe is the largest developer, owner, and operator of self storage centres in Europe with 189 stores across seven European countries: Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden, Netherlands,United Kingdom. Shurgard is one of the pioneers of the self storage concept in Europe and has worked successfully to build customer awareness and acceptance of self storage across Europe. Shurgard’s European network caters for more than 100.000 consumers and has 929,000 square metres of net rentable storage space. <//a>www.shurgard.eu

Shurgard is the European leader in self storage solutions and is 49% owned by Public Storage (NYSE:PSA).

About Public Storage

Public Storage, a member of the S&P 500, The Forbes Global 2000 and FT Global 500, is a fully integrated, self-administered and self-managed real estate investment trust that primarily acquires, develops, owns and operates self‑storage facilities. The Company’s headquarters are located in California.  At December 31, 2010, the Company had interests in 2.048 self-storage facilities located in 38 states with approximately 12 million net rentable square metres in the United States and 189 storage facilities located in seven Western European nations with 929.000 net rentable square metres operated under the “Shurgard” brand.  The Company also owns a 41% common equity interest in PS Business Parks, Inc. which owned and operated approximately two million rentable square metres of commercial space, primarily flex, multi-tenant office and industrial space, at December 31, 2010. www.publicstorage.com

For more information, please contact:

Frank Boot – Vice-President Marketing Shurgard Europe

E frank.boot@shurgard.eu

T +32 (0)2 229 56 00

Valerie Bruyninckx - Grayling

E valerie.bruyninckx@grayling.com

T + 32 (0)2 713 07 18

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

EU to adopt new Basel rules in 2011 - 6 October 2010

During September 2010, the European Commission announced plans to adopt new capital rules for banks next year after the Basel Banking Committee agreed to higher capital standards on Sunday 12 September 2010.

Background

The Capital Requirements Directive (CRD), adopted in 2006, is currently undergoing its fourth review at the European Commission. The rules would enforce proposals under discussion by the Basel Committee for Banking Supervision, which sets minimum standards for banks in 27 countries and includes global standard setters like Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve.

In July, Germany was the only member of the Basel Committee - which gathers banking supervisors and central bankers - to refuse to endorse draft rules on new minimum levels of capital which banks will have to hold.

Meanwhile, on 7 July 2010, the European Parliament adopted the EU's third round of revisions to the CRD. The EU's finance ministers are expected to approve the Parliament's text in October 2010, bringing the legislative process on CRD III to a close. CRD III requires banks to adopt new policies on the structure, amount and timing of bonus payments to prevent traders from underwriting risky deals in order to boost their salaries.

The new principles even go beyond the recommendations of the G20's Financial Stability Board because they impose limits on cash bonuses, require a partial deferral of bonuses and also place a cap on their amount relative to fixed salaries.

In the first quarter of 2001, the European Commission (via DG INTERNAL MARKET) will propose the necessary legislative texts to transpose the principles agreed into European law.

The EU's adoption of the Basel rules will take the form of a revision of the directives on capital requirements. This will be the fourth revision of the bloc's Capital Requirements Directive after the European Parliament approved CRD III early this summer.

The Basel group's agreement has been on the cards since the Lehman Brothers crash in 2008. Banks will have to store up to 7% more capital as a line of defense against future crashes in stock markets. Common equity requirements have been hiked from 2.5% to 4% and banks will also be expected to have capital buffers of 2.5%.

Some countries were pushing for an additional buffer of 2.5% for a total of 9.5%, but the group could not agree on this level and will allow individual countries to adopt it if they want.

This agreement will have a major impact for the continent of Europe as it is home to around half of the world's global banking assets.

The combination of a much stronger definition of capital, higher minimum requirements and the introduction of new capital buffers is expected to ensure that banks are better able to withstand periods of economic and financial stress, therefore supporting economic growth.

However, the financial sector has warned that the new rules will reduce their profitability and raise the cost of borrowing at a time when economic growth is lagging.

Regulators argue that banks will have a nine-year adjustment period to wean themselves off support and adopt the new rules slowly.

The Basel rules are subject to approval in November by the next G20 group meeting in Seoul.

Countries will have to phase in the new rules by 1 January 2013, but their entry into force is staggered for the agreement's stricter regulations. Some provisions will not take full effect until the beginning of 2019.

In a move that will please Germany's public-sector Landesbanks, which recently said they would need to raise 50 billion euros to satisfy Basel III, the Basel group agreed to let banks receive bailout money for capital reserves until 2017.

To shoulder the burden of the higher reserves – and to accommodate the acquisition of Deutsche Postbank, Germany's biggest lender, Deutsche Bank said it would sell shares to raise 9.8 billion on capital markets.

Positions

The World Savings Banks Institute and the European Savings Banks Group issued a statement in support of all efforts to strengthen the resilience of the banking sector.

"However, regarding the current proposals, WSBI and ESBG find it regrettable that the Basel Committee has adopted a 'one size fits all' approach for capital, but does not make use of the possibilities for fine tuning according to banks' activities,"

"European banks will meet the new requirements," said Guido Ravoet, secretary-general of the European Banking Federation.

"But it will have consequences on the volume and cost of lending and therefore a cost on our economy too. I would like to stress that in Europe, 75% of lending to the private sector is carried out by banks, against only 25% in the US,"

Basel III's "contribution to long-term financial stability and growth will be substantial. The transition arrangements will enable banks to meet the new standards while supporting the economic recovery," said Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank.

Next Steps

· 2011: EU to amend Capital Requirements Directive for fourth time.

· 1 Jan. 2013: Banks to begin adopting Basel III rules. 

LATEST NEWS FROM THE USA 

Energy Policies & the ‘Energy Performance of Buildings Directive’

We are currently experiencing some very challenging developments that will strongly influence the national energy policies. Because of the present economic crisis, public opinion may slightly tend towards postponing further tightening of energy performance requirements. However, at the same time the daily discouraging news about the Mexican Gulf disaster gives suggestion to reducing the dependency from fossil fuels as soon as possible.

The announcement of the recasts of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive and of the Product Energy Labelling Directive dated 19 May 2010 which were both published in the EU Official Journal on 18 June 2010 are a sign of  continuing development in such challenging days.

[Directive 2010/31/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 May 2010 on the energy performance of buildings (recast) English version of the recast of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive can be viewed at: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ%3AL%3A2010%3A153%3A0013%3A0035%3AEN%3APDF ]

Some important observations:

The Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (Recast), 2010/31/EU, requires that:

• All new buildings must be nearly zero energy buildings by 2020 and Member States shall set intermediate targets for 2015. A Nearly Zero Energy Building is a building that has a very high energy performance. The nearly zero or very low amount of energy required should be covered to a very significant extent by energy from renewable sources.
• Member States shall draw up national action plans for increasing the number of nearly zero energy buildings. These national action plans shall include policies and measures to stimulate the transformation of buildings which are refurbished into nearly zero energy buildings.
• The leading role of the public sector is reinforced. By 2018, all new public buildings shall be nearly zero energy buildings. Energy Performance Certificates will be displayed in the majority of public buildings. Public authorities will be encouraged to implement the recommendations included in the certificate.

(Note: A significant new requirement under the recast is that all new buildings across Europe must be built to a very low energy standard by 31 December 2020, with public buildings having to meet this level by the end of 2018. While no specific targets were set for the refurbishment of buildings, which account for 99% of the current building stock, all buildings undergoing major renovation will have to meet certain minimum energy performance requirements set by the Member States. The recast also builds on the 2002 Directive by improving rules on inspections and on energy performance certificates. An all-important article on financial incentives and market barriers requires Member States to list and propose financing schemes to support the implementation of the recast.)

The Directive on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources (Directive 2009/28/EC) requires that:

• Member States shall by 2015 require, where appropriate, the adoption of minimum levels of energy from renewable sources in new buildings and in existing buildings that are subject to major renovation.
• New public buildings and existing public buildings that are subject to major renovation, at national, regional and local level, shall fulfil an exemplary role from 2012 onwards. 

Impact, compliance and control of legislation

While the European Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) imposes Member States (MS) to set requirements, it does not specify the severity of those requirements, nor the measures to be taken to control implementation. Consequently, MS can fulfil the requirements of articles 4 through 6 of the EPBD (minimum energy performance requirements for new and renovated buildings) without increasing the existing levels of requirements and without carrying out any kind of control. We can therefore expect further views about the impact of the present EPBD on the requirements and how MS deal with the respect of requirements.

Compliance and control are essential parts of successfully implementing the EPBD. The main recommendations and findings from reports collected by ASIEPI (ASsessment and Improvement of the EPBD Impact - for new buildings and building renovation) have varied significantly regarding EPBD implementation, the large potential for further savings, the needs for infringement procedures by the European Commission, the importance of an integrated approach to buildings and their systems, support for innovative technologies, the necessity of investment in awareness and motivation actions.