Pamfleet chief Andrew Moore and his team reached the hard cap for their latest fund
Hong Kong-based real estate private equity firm Pamfleet has reached a $450 million final close on Pamfleet Real Estate Fund III, Mingtiandi has come to understand.
The investment vehicle is the company’s third pooled investment vehicle targeting value-add projects in Hong Kong and Singapore.
The $450 million mark matches the hard cap target which Pamfleet had declared in a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commsion in December last year, and comes four years after the company headed by former Jardine Fleming executive Andrew Moore raised $400 million for its Pamfleet Real Estate Fund II.
With no investments yet announced from this latest fund, Pamfleet, which made its name transforming the former Hang Seng building on Des Voeux Road, Central into the Nexxus Building, is expected to begin deploying its latest capital cache in new projects spanning the commercial, residential and hotel projects in its two target cities.
Pension Funds Get Involved Following Value-Add Deals
Among the investors in Pamfleet’s third Hong Kong and Shanghai fund is the San Francisco Employees’ Retirement, after the $25.5 billion Calfornia pension fund committed $50 million in capital to the vehicle in June last year.
Pamfleet launched the Nate co-living project in Kowloon last year
Other investors in Fund III have yet to be publicly announced, however, other media reports have indicated that Moore’s team has been successful in attracting greater interest from pension funds for this latest effort. In response to inquiries from Mingtiandi sources at Pamfleet declined to comment.
The private equity firm’s success in attracting new investment may be due in part to a recent string of acquisitions of aging properties, primarily in Hong Kong, which the company has spruced up and often resold for a quick return.
In early 2018 Pamfleet sold the Bonham Circus office building in the city’s Sheung Wan area for HK$1.7 billion (then $217 million) less than two years less than two years after purchasing what was then known as the EIB Centre for HK$1 billion.
In November last year the company jumped into Hong Kong’s co-living experiment with the launch of the Nate studio apartments in the Tsim Sha Tsui area. That joint venture project with local asset manager District15 came around two years after the two companies had teamed up to buy the 13-storey building on Nathan Road for around HK$600 million.
The group has also been active in retail, teaming up with the UK’s Chelsfield to buy the Provident Square shopping centre in Hong Kong’s North Point area from CK Asset-sponsored Fortune REIT for HK$2 billion ($256 million) in December 2017. That property has since been renamed Worfu with design firm Lead8 appointed to redesign the project.
HK-SG Closing Follows Mainland Milestone
Pamfleet is understood to have notified investors in its latest fund of the final closing in correspondence today, bringing an end to a frenetic round of financing.
In early May the 19-year-old company reached a $100 million final close on its second mainland China real estate investment fund, as reported by Mingtiandi.
Under its first China fund, which was 90 percent deployed as of May, Pamfleet invested in a pair of value-add residential projects in Shanghai and also acquired a set of strata-title office floors on the city’s West Huaihai Road from Blackstone for RMB 410 million ($59.61 million).
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