Warburg Pincus India Logistics JV Plans $300M Expansion and More Asia Real Estate Headlines

Stories from the world of warehouses lead Mingtiandi’s list of real estate headlines today as an industrial developer backed by India’s Embassy Group and New York-based Warburg Pincus announces plans to build more sheds in India.

At the same time, a report out of New York shows that Blackstone’s $18.7 billion purchase of GLP’s US portfolio was made possible in part by a loan from GLP’s old friends at Singapore’s sovereign investment fund.

WeWork continues to attract attention in the US as it reaches for $4 billion in funding as part of its current restructuring attempt and the fund management arm of one of the world’s largest property agencies is happy to introduce their new global CEO. All these stories and more are in today’s roundup.

Embassy Industrial Parks Announces $300M Expansion in India

Embassy Industrial Parks, a joint venture between India’s Embassy Group and private equity giant Warburg Pincus, will invest about USD 300 million (about Rs 2,100 crore) in the next three years to develop its ongoing logistic and warehousing projects, a top company official said.

The company, a joint venture between realty firm Embassy group and private equity firm Warburg Pincus, is developing industrial and warehousing parks in Chakan (Pune); Bilaspur and Farrukhnagar (NCR); Sriperumbudur and Hasur (Tamil Nadu); and Hyderabad in phased manner. Read more>>

GIC Provided $1B Mezzanine Loan for Blackstone Purchase of GLP Portfolio

GIC, a Singaporean sovereign wealth fund, is the lender behind $1 billion of mezzanine debt in the financing for Blackstone‘s biggest-ever industrial acquisition, Commercial Observer has learned.

The loan is part of an overall $8.5 billion financing of a portion of the massive portfolio Blackstone purchased earlier this year from GLP, another Singaporean firm. GIC’s mezz loan funds the acquisition of a subset of that portfolio consisting of 406 properties in 18 different states, according to DBRS Morningstar, which analyzed the transaction. Blackstone is buying the assets as part of a larger deal to take over 170 million square feet of U.S. industrial space. Read more>>

WeWork Seeks $1B Lifeline from Softbank, $3B Loan from JP Morgan

WeWork is locked in negotiations this week with its largest shareholder, Softbank Group Corp (9984.T), over a new $1 billion investment to enable the shared office space company to go through a major restructuring, according to sources familiar with discussions.

If the talks are successful, WeWork, which had to abandon an initial public offering last week because of investor concerns about how it was valued and its business model, will seek to negotiate a $3 billion debt deal with JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N), the sources said. Read more>>

Chuck Leitner Named Global Head of CBRE GI

CBRE Group, Inc. today announced that Charles (“Chuck”) Leitner will join the company as Global CEO of CBRE Global Investors, CBRE’s investment management business. Mr. Leitner will succeed Ritson Ferguson, who had informed the company of his intention to step down from the role of Global CEO of CBRE Global Investors. Mr. Ferguson will continue with CBRE Global Investors as CEO of CBRE Clarion Securities, the real asset securities business he co-founded in 1991.

Mr. Leitner will join CBRE Global Investors from Berkshire Group, where he has served as President & CEO since 2013. Berkshire is an investment management and operating company specializing in US residential property. Prior to Berkshire, he served as Global CEO of RREEF/Deutsche Asset Management, a global alternative asset management enterprise with $80 billion of assets under management. Read more>>

China Vanke, BYD Team up for RMB 1.1B Tech, Logistics Fund

Chinese electric car and battery maker BYD Co. Ltd. and property giant China Vanke Co. Ltd. agreed to launch a 1.1 billion yuan ($154 million) fund targeting businesses focusing on technology and logistics in a bid to tap the country’s fast-growing tech sector.

BYD Auto Industry, a subsidiary of BYD, will initially commit 600 million yuan, while Chengdu Vanke Real Estate, which is owned by Vanke, subscribed for 500 million yuan, BYD said Tuesday in a filing with the Shenzhen stock exchange. The fund will be managed by investment firm Tianjin Rongtai, which will commit 1 million yuan. Read more>>

South Korean Investors Buy Record $11.5B in Overseas Real Estate in 2019 1H

Even before a Seoul-based buyer emerged as the successful bidder for Anbang Insurance’s luxury U.S. hotel portfolio, South Korean players had spent more on commercial real estate outside Asia in 2019 than investors from Singapore, China and Hong Kong combined.

The $11.5 billion tally for completed cross-border deals so far in 2019 already sweeps away their previous annual record of $9.6 billion in 2017. If Mirae Asset’s mulitbillion-dollar hotel deal and other transactions in contract close before the end of the year, 2019 would more than double South Korean buyers’ previous annual record for acquisitions outside their domestic market. Read more>>

WeWork India Plans 3 New Centres in NOIDA Area

WeWork India, owned by realty firm Embassy Group, is foraying into Noida market, and has taken on lease over 3 lakh sq ft office space to open three co-working centres comprising nearly 3,900 seats.

Currently, WeWork India has 26 operational co-working centres with 46,000 seating capacity. It has 9 centres in Bengaluru, 10 in Mumbai, 6 in Gurugram and one in Pune where seats are available in a price range of ₹5,000-40,000 per desk per month. Read more>>

Hang Lung’s Ronnie Chan Has Hong Kong Politics All Figured Out

One of Hong Kong’s most outspoken property developers has dismissed the notion that the city’s chief executive should be an administrator, saying the job requires strong, political leadership and calling the idea that it could be handled by a civil servant the “most ridiculous thing”.

Diminutive in stature but never short of opinions, Ronnie Chan Chi-chung, the chairman of Hang Lung Properties, who supported embattled city leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor during her election in 2017, was equally blunt about the causes of Hong Kong’s ongoing turmoil. Read more>>

Tune in again tomorrow for more news, and be sure to follow @Mingtiandi on Twitter, or bookmark Mingtiandi’s LinkedIn page for headlines as they happen.

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