The story
Early years
At the end of the 1990s, the German government decided to privatize homes for railway workers as part of the railway reform. The Japanese financial group Nomura Holdings and its subsidiary Deutsche Annington (named after Annington Homes from Great Britain) sought to acquire them. After years of negotiations, the company finally received a significant share in 2000. The company responded to criticism of the sale with extensive special rights, such as a lifetime right of residence and a restriction on rent increases. In addition, tenants were allowed to purchase their property. In the following years, Deutsche Annington invested in further smaller holdings of railway workers' apartments, which had previously remained in the ownership of the federal government.
Acquisitions
Deutsche Annington took over several smaller holdings, for example, from Allianz and RWE. In 2003, the E.ON energy group also put its real estate business up for sale under the name Viterra. With the acquisition of over 150,000 apartments, Deutsche Annington became the market leader in Germany. It was the largest transaction of its kind in the country's history, which met with criticism from unions and tenant protection associations alike. In the course of this, Terra Firma Capital Partners' majority shareholding in Deutsche Annington was repeatedly brought up as a central theme.
Deutsche Annington achieved its returns with a combination of renting and selling apartments. It was instrumental in shaping the concept of socially responsible tenant privatization. In this way, the company wanted to raise funds to expand its portfolio to half a million and later even to one million apartments. In 2007, Deutsche Annington announced that it would again turn away from tenant privatization. From then on, the company concentrated on smaller acquisitions, such as the Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe's subsidiary Corpus.
Going public
In 2010, the profit of Deutsche Annington exceeded the 500 million euro mark for the first time. Nevertheless, the global economic and financial crisis made access to cheap debt capital more difficult. Refinancing became one of the main problems of the entire real estate industry. For this reason, an IPO was back on the agenda. To this end, the company hired Rolf Buch, a former member of the Bertelsmann executive board, as CEO. He emphasized above all the size of the company as a distinguishing feature. The rise in key interest rates dampened the interest of potential investors so that the IPO had to be postponed several times. In 2013, Deutsche Annington finally placed its shares on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange with a lower volume and a reduced issue price. Two years later, the company became the first representative of the real estate industry to be included in the DAX, the index of the largest listed stock corporations in Germany.
Vonovia origins
The media had already reported on Deutsche Annington's interest in GAGFAH in 2003. At the end of 2014, Deutsche Annington then officially offered to take over the competitor for around 3.9 billion euros to create a leading residential property group in Europe. Following the approval of the shareholders and the antitrust authorities, the transaction was completed ahead of schedule in March 2015. In 2015, the annual general meeting voted to rename the company Vonovia to modernize its external image. The administrative and statutory headquarters were moved to the new offices in Bochum.
European expansion
Vonovia initially failed with its 2015 offer for Deutsche Wohnen but at least prevented Deutsche Wohnen's planned merger with LEG Immobilien. The company then turned to other European countries. A strategic partnership was agreed upon with the French housing company Société Nationale Immobilière (now CDC Habitat) in 2017. The acquisition of Conwert Immobilien and BUWOG made Vonovia the leading real estate group in Austria in 2018. In the same year, the company exceeded the threshold of 50% of the shares in the Swedish housing company Victoria Park, which has been 100% owned by Vonovia since 2019. Vonovia expanded its position in 2019 by acquiring its Swedish rival Hembla.
A renewed attempt at taking over Deutsche Wohnen in May 2021 was approved by the Federal Cartel Office but stalled when the 50% threshold was not met at first. Only the third offer from August 2021 resulted in more than 60% acceptances, thus successfully completing the takeover.
Strategic shift since 2022
The end of the cheap-money era in 2022, combined with sharply rising construction costs and interest rates, significantly altered Vonovia's operating environment. In January 2023, the company suspended all new construction projects that had not yet started and abandoned a previous target of building 60,000 additional apartments. For the 2023 financial year, Vonovia reported a loss of €6.76 billion, its largest ever, after writing down its portfolio by €10.7 billion.
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To reduce debt, Vonovia disposed of significant parts of its portfolio. In April 2023, Apollo Global Management acquired a minority stake in the Südewo portfolio of approximately 21,000 apartments in Baden-Württemberg for €1 billion. In 2024, Vonovia sold around 4,500 apartments in Berlin to two state-owned housing companies for €700 million.
In December 2024, Vonovia and Deutsche Wohnen signed a domination and profit and loss transfer agreement. Following approval by both companies' extraordinary general meetings in January 2025, Deutsche Wohnen's management and profits became subject to direction by Vonovia. Outside shareholders of Deutsche Wohnen receive an annual guaranteed compensation of €1.22 per share or may exchange their shares at a ratio of 0.7947 Vonovia shares per Deutsche Wohnen share.
On 6 May 2025, the supervisory board appointed Luka Mucic as the new chief executive officer. Mucic, previously chief financial officer of Vodafone Group and earlier chief financial officer of SAP SE from 2014 to 2023, took office on 1 January 2026, succeeding Rolf Buch, who had led the company since 2013.
From Wikipedia’s article on Vonovia, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5