Caisse, Colony Agree to Buy French Property

Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec, Canada’s biggest pension fund, and Colony Capital Inc. of Los Angeles agreed to buy a building under construction and 1.5 million square feet of land in suburban Paris. Terms weren’t disclosed. The property, being acquired from French conglomerate Vivendi and its CGIS unit, is near La Defense, an area of modern high-rise office buildings outside the French capital. Colony is a real estate investment fund that holds one-third of its $5-billion assets in Europe. A growing number of foreign investors, such as ProLogis Trust of the U.S., have been buying French commercial real estate since prices plummeted in 1992.