The 500-room Oakland Marriott City Center (Image: Gaw Capital Partners)
A California hotel formerly owned by Hong Kong’s Gaw Capital Partners sells at a deep discount, with that deal leading today’s headline roundup. Also making the list, Australia’s central bank pauses rate cuts and Bain Capital sells a stake in India’s Embassy REIT.
Invesco Buys Former Gaw Oakland Hotel at Half-Off
Oakland’s biggest hotel now belongs to its lender, the latest bit of evidence that things are continuing to get worse before they get better for the San Francisco Bay Area’s struggling hospitality market.
In February, the 500-room Oakland Marriott City Center defaulted on a loan from Invesco CMI Investments, which had bought the debt the previous spring. Now public records show that the lender, an affiliate of global real estate player Invesco Real Estate, has purchased the downtown hotel at a foreclosure auction for $70.2 million, about half the price it last sold for back in 2017, before the COVID pandemic knocked the wind out of the region’s once-thriving hotel industry. Read more>>
Australian Central Bank Holds Rates Steady in Surprise Move
Australia’s Reserve Bank has not delivered an interest rate cut in July, as had been widely forecast, but has indicated it expects to cut rates further from here.
The RBA kept the cash rate on hold at 3.85 percent, in a decision the central bank’s governor described as more about “timing than direction” of rates. The decision defied financial market expectations, which had priced in a 96 percent chance of a 25-basis-point cut, and economist forecasts. Read more>>
Bain Capital Sells Down Stake in India’s Embassy Office Parks REIT
Private equity firm Bain Capital on Thursday divested a 1.9 percent unitholding in Embassy Office Parks REIT for INR 6.9 billion ($80 million) through an open market transaction.
US-based Bain, through its affiliate APAC Company XXIII, sold a little over 17.8 million crore units, amounting to a 1.87 percent unitholding in Bengaluru-based Embassy REIT, as per bulk deal data on the BSE. Read more>>
Hong Kong’s Gaw Buys Seattle Office Park
Gaw Capital Partners has acquired a sprawling office park in Bellevue, Washington, extending a surge in big-money office investment activity across Seattle’s Eastside in recent weeks.
The Hong Kong private equity firm acquired the 15-building, 560,000 square foot (52,026 square metre) Bellefield Office Park, south of downtown Bellevue, from Houston-based Lionstone Investments. The deed-in-lieu-of-foreclosure deal closed in the last week of June, according to brokerage Broderick Group’s second-quarter market report. Read more>>
Mubadala-Backed G42 and Microsoft in $2B Vietnam Data Centre Proposal
The Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee has received an investment proposal for a hyperscale data centre dedicated to AI development and data services, with a total investment of $2 billion.
A consortium of G42 Technology (major shareholders include the sovereign wealth fund of the United Arab Emirates and Microsoft), FPT Corporation, VinaCapital investment fund and Viet Thai Investment Group is behind the proposal. Read more>>
Disappearance of Mainland Banker Tied to Troubled Macau Property Project
A senior ICBC executive, Jiang Yisheng, has vanished amid investigations into a troubled Macau real estate project tied to disgraced billionaire David Ng, sources told Caixin Global.
Jiang’s disappearance comes as ICBC Macau grapples with rising non-performing loans and legal actions against Ng’s family over outstanding debts. Jiang, a veteran banker and former chairman of ICBC’s Macau branch from 2018 to 2023, has become unreachable, sparking speculation that authorities have taken him into custody. Read more>>
Aussie Players Compete to Take Over Lendlease Funds
The contest for Lendlease’s flagship Australian property funds could result in the A$10 billion ($6.6 billion) empire being broken up, as more contenders are likely to emerge for the prime vehicles that the manager is desperate to keep.
The listed company is facing multiple challenges to hold on to the Australian Prime Property Funds, which own top retail, office and industrial properties across the country. Read more>>
South Korea to Overhaul Corporate Pension System
South Korea is planning a sweeping overhaul of its corporate retirement pension system by introducing a competitive, fund-based model that would pit large private-sector fund management firms against each other to boost investment returns and efficiency.
The National Policy Planning Committee, an interim presidential policy advisory body launched under President Lee Jae-myung’s administration, has adopted the “fund-type retirement pension” system as a key national agenda item. Read more>>
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