James Nelson, CEO of Global Net Lease (NYSE: GNL), participated in a video interview at Nareit’s REITworld: 2018 Annual Conference in San Francisco.
Nelson discussed how Global Net Lease reaches out to its retail investors through fund manager and financial advisor road shows, noting that it’s “very important to educate people.”
“When people start to understand what we do, we get a much better response,” he said. “A lot of people don’t really look that deeply into the company and how we operate, and the quality of our portfolio [or] the high quality of our tenants.”
When investing in international markets, Nelson said that the REIT focuses on “stable” countries.
“In Western Europe, we’re in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Luxemburg, Finland, and the U.K.,” he said. “Those are the countries with the strongest sovereign debt rating, and most probably, the...safest political environment.”
Nelson added that Global Net Lease had 38 individual mortgages in the U.K. that led to a recent multi-property financing. “It extended out our debt duration in the U.K. to five years,” he said.