A consortium of private investors led by Irish investment firm Quinlan Private and global investor GE Real Estate have agreed to buy a shopping centre in Plovdiv in Bulgaria for almost €100 million. The Mall of Plovdiv in Bulgaria's second largest city is currently under construction and should be finished by the end of next year. The Plovdiv centre has a three-story shopping gallery and a 10-screen cinema. Only 51 per cent of the centre's retail units have been let although a further 29 per cent of the space is said to be under negotiation. Quinlan Private and GE Real Estate already own the Mall of Sofia shopping centre in a joint venture. Peter Donnelly, partner for central and eastern Europe at Quinlan Private, said: "we expect this asset to be a direct beneficiary of EU accession, continuing foreign direct investment and accelerating structural fund spend. Our objective is to continue to identify and acquire similarly attractive assets for our investor group." Quinlan Private, which was founded by former tax inspector Derek Quinlan at the end of the 1980s, hit the headlines in 2004 with its $1.68 billion purchase of London's Savoy Hotel Group. Mr Quinlan last week agreed to pay around €700 million to buy a building in London's docklands in what is the second-largest single property deal in the UK. He is buying the 42-storey Citigroup building in Canary Wharf in a 50-50 joint venture with UK private investment company Propinvest, making the deal worth around €1.4 billion in total.