Doing Almost Nothing

W.I.P. by J.Y.Ooi


part i

  1. Preface
  2. Kurfürstendamm
  3. Prehistory
  4. Dichotomy of Ku’damm

part ii

  1. Aggregate and Adler
  2. Crisis
  3. Brief

part iii

  1. Precarity
  2. Emancipation
  3. Plans
  4. Trajectory
  5. Outcome(?)

PART IV

  1. References
  2. Credit

Aggregate and Adler



"What a sight the poor make in the moonlight"

— James Huneker, The New Cosmopolis

Figure 3: The man, the myth, the legend, the tycoon himself, Cevdet Caner. Photo by Bloomberg Finance. 


The story begins with Cevdet Caner, an Austrian financier whose controversial career has shaped both Adler Group and Aggregate Holdings. In 2000, Caner founded Adler Real Estate, a Berlin-based property firm focused on acquiring undervalued residential assets. Over two decades, Adler grew through aggressive mergers, notably absorbing Consus Real Estate in 2018 to form Adler Group, which became Germany’s third-largest residential landlord, managing over 70,000 apartments. Adler’s strategy relied on “value-add” models: purchasing aging buildings, renovating them, and raising rents—a practice critics linked to gentrification and tenant displacement.

Parallel to Adler’s rise, Caner established Aggregate Holdings in Luxembourg in 2015. Unlike Adler’s focus on residential portfolios, Aggregate targeted high-risk, high-reward urban developments, often in prime locations like Berlin’s Kurfürstendamm and Lisbon’s waterfront. Aggregate’s projects were characterized by luxury mixed-use designs, funded through complex debt instruments and joint ventures. Crucially, Caner structured financial ties between Adler and Aggregate, with Adler’s balance sheet often serving as collateral for Aggregate’s speculative ventures. By 2021, Aggregate held a 19% stake in Adler Group, while Adler subsidiaries engaged in opaque transactions with Aggregate-controlled entities, raising concerns about conflicts of interest.

The Watershed Moment

A pivotal moment came in 2020, when Adler Group sold a prime Berlin property at Kurfürstendamm 231 to Aggregate Holdings for €225 million. The transaction drew scrutiny: independent appraisers valued the site at €300–350 million, prompting allegations of undervaluation and self-dealing. The site, a former parking lot adjacent to the ruins of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, was to become Project FURST, a 32,000 sqm complex designed by David Chipperfield Architects. The design—a restrained, stone-clad structure with cascading terraces and public plazas—aimed to counter Berlin’s trend of glass-and-steel austerity, reviving the Kurfürstendamm’s pre-war elegance.

For Aggregate, the project symbolized its ambition to redefine Berlin’s urban identity. For Adler, the sale provided liquidity to service its €6.5 billion debt pile. However, the deal’s structure—a sale-leaseback agreement where Adler retained partial usage rights—exemplified the risky financial interdependencies between the two firms.