James Nelson, president and CEO of Global Net Lease (NYSE: GNL), joined Nareit for a video interview at REITworld 2017.
Global Net Lease’s portfolio of real estate assets spans the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands and Finland.
Nelson took over as CEO in August 2017. He explained that the company’s priorities include refinancing its debt stack, focusing on acquisitions and “growing the company again.”
The company’s assets are roughly split between the U.S. and Europe. Nelson noted that assets in Germany have appreciated dramatically in the last few years, in part due to Brexit, while assets in the UK have become “kind of stagnant.”
In the U.S., Global Net Lease is finding “really great properties,” as it focuses mainly on distribution and industrial assets, Nelson said. “We’ve got a very robust pipeline of those types of properties,” he noted.
Meanwhile, Nelson said its retail tenants include dollar stores that operate in areas where Amazon does not have a large share of the market.