Hines Rolls Out Asia Value-Add Strategy with Former GLP Exec Caleb Shen at the Helm

Having grown its Asia team to $7.9 billion in assets under management, US developer and fund manager on Tuesday announced a value-add real estate strategy targetting opportunities in the region.

The new investment vehicle is led by Caleb Shen, the company said in a statement, with the former GLP Capital Partners and CapitaLand executive having come aboard at Hines’ Singapore office in August.

“Asia is ripe with opportunities to accelerate transformational improvements that create value for investors and Hines’ lifecycle integrated approach and broad and deep platform in its gateway markets makes us the ideal partner,” said David Steinbach, global chief investment officer, Hines. “Moreover, the new addition of a value-add strategy in Asia rounds out our suite of open-ended core-plus and closed-ended value-add strategies globally, enabling us to meet investor needs across geographies and the risk spectrum.”

Dubbed HAREP for Hines Asia Real Estate Partners, the closed-ended value-add strategy debuts more than two years after Hines launched its Hines Asia Property Partners (HAPP) multi-sector, core-plus open-ended fund, with that vehicle having since raised over $1.3 billion from 15 global investors, the company said.

Regional Experience

Appointed as a senior managing director, Shen will be overseeing HAREP while reporting to Hines’ chief investment officer for Asia, Chiang Ling Ng, after serving as head of Asia portfolio and asset management for GCP from August 2022 through the same month this year.

Before joining the industrial specialist, the graduate of Washington University in St Louis and the Booth School at the University of Chicago spent more than four years at CapitaLand in Singapore where he established the first-ever discretionary real estate fund for CapitaLand Investment after it was formed in 2021.

Shen also was part of the core team that set up Apollo Global Management’s Asia real estate investment platform and its first Asia real estate strategy while serving as a partner with the firm in Shanghai from 2012 through 2018, according to his LinkedIn profile.

During his time in China’s commercial capital Shen also worked stints with CBRE, Asia Pacific Land and LaSalle Investment Management.

Growing Footprint

Hines is establishing the fund after expanding its Asia Pacific footprint in recent years to 15 offices in eight countries with over 300 team members.

In May of this year the company brought on board former Mitsubishi Group executive Kiyohito Motoyama as director of logistics and industrial for Japan, while also naming two additional executives to its leadership team in Asia’s second-largest economy.

Those appointments came just two weeks after Hines announced that it had acquired five Japan apartment buildings on behalf of its HAPP fund. Also this year, the company re-opened the former Butterfly on Prat hotel in Hong Kong’s Tsim Sha Tsui area as its first rental residential property in the Asian financial hub, after acquiring that property in 2021 for a reported HK$925 million (then $118.6 million).

Hines was also busy Down Under this year, buying a Queensland cold storage facility on behalf of HAPP during March. In February the company announced plans for a $1 billion complex in Busan, South Korea, which will combined R&D space with offices, retail and residential space.