Logos Founders in Talks to Sell Equity Stakes to ESR as SE Asia Chief Exits

Stephen Hawkins, former head of Southeast Asia for industrial developer and fund manager Logos Property, has sold his stake in the company to Logos’s parent group ESR, as co-founders Trent Iliffe and John Marsh continue to negotiate their own exits.

Hawkins, who joined Logos to help establish its Southeast Asia business in 2016, completed the disposal of his portion of a 13.6 percent equity interest in the company controlled by Logos’s management on 20 June, Hong Kong-listed ESR said Sunday in a filing.

Logos came under the ESR group in early 2022 as part of the warehouse giant’s $5.2 billion takeover of Singapore-based ARA Asset Management. ARA had acquired a majority stake in Logos in 2020 for an undisclosed price.

Logos co-CEOs Iliffe and Marsh, who co-founded the company in 2010, are in the “advanced stages of discussions” in relation to the sale of their stakes, ESR co-founder and co-CEO Jeffrey Shen said in the filing.

Three-Year Deadline

Hawkins held an equity interest in Logos of 1.31 percent at the end of 2023, with Iliffe and Marsh owning 6.15 percent each, according to ESR’s annual report. The subsidiary had balance-sheet assets totalling $802.3 million and liabilities amounting to $204 million.

The ARA transaction stipulated that ESR would buy out the Logos co-founders at fair market value within three years of the deal’s January 2022 completion. No financial details were disclosed in Sunday’s filing.

In May, a consortium of investors including Barry Sternlicht’s Starwood Capital made a non-binding and conditional offer to acquire ESR, in a deal that could lead to the group’s privatisation.

Starwood and its consortium members, Sixth Street Partners and SSW Partners, hold 15.7 percent of ESR’s issued shares, while private equity major Warburg Pincus has 14.04 percent and the company’s founders collectively have a 7.43 percent interest.

The consortium has given its consent in connection with the Logos founder buyouts, ESR said Sunday. The group’s HKEX-listed shares were down 0.5 percent in Monday trading.

Cash-Outs Continue

The consortium’s proposal was made on 25 April, just over a month after Starwood acquired a nearly 11 percent stake in ESR from Redwood Investment, an offshore vehicle controlled by two of the group’s co-founders, Stuart Gibson and Charles de Portes. The shareholding corresponded to a market value of roughly HK$4 billion ($510 million) based on trading prices at the time.

News of Starwood’s investment came less than two weeks after ESR said it would sell its ARA Private Funds business to Sumitomo Mitsui Finance and Leasing at an enterprise value of $270 million.

ESR is chaired by Warburg Pincus president Jeffrey Perlman, whose promotion to CEO of the Manhattan-based fund manager was announced last week.

Note: This article has been updated to show that Stephen Hawkins joined Logos in 2016. An earlier version indicated that he had co-founded the company in 2010. Mingtiandi regrets the error.