A Greater Tokyo shed owned by Unified Industrial, which Macquarie Real Estate Partners backed in 2021
Macquarie Asset Management has reached final close for an opportunistic real estate fund, with the vehicle having raised $1.9 billion in equity commitments to deploy under a global mandate focused predominantly on developed markets.
The investment management arm of Sydney-based financial services giant Macquarie Group announced that the fund – Macquarie Real Estate Partners (MREP) – will invest through both fund commitments and co-investment strategies, with capital already having been deployed in the logistics, residential and new economy office sectors.
“We have a long history of investing in specialist operators and we are delighted to secure the close of our second opportunistic vehicle leveraging this strategy,” Eric Wurtzebach, global head of real estate at Macquarie Asset Management said in a release on Monday. “Our existing and new investors have demonstrated strong support for this strategy which both enhances our access to high quality real estate and provides an opportunity to generate alpha.”
The investment manager said the fund secured commitments from a range of institutional investors including pension and sovereign wealth funds in Australia, Canada and the Middle East.
Global Mandate
MREP is the second vehicle under Macquarie Asset Management’s opportunistic real estate fund series after the Asia Pacific opportunistic real estate partnership (MREP Asia 1), which reached final close in 2021 with A$1.1 billion ($850 million) in equity commitments, and is now deployed across developed markets in the region.
Eric Wurtzebach, global head of real estate at Macquarie Asset Management
The series targets property sectors aligned with global themes of technology, demographic shifts and sustainability, and aims to leverage Macquarie Asset Management’s track record and experience investing in and partnering with specialist operators.
In Asia Pacific, MREP’s investments to date include Tokyo-based logistics developer Unified Industrial, which the fund manager backed in 2021 through an equity investment as well as providing initial capital to fund the builder’s pipeline of projects in Japan and China. The portfolio also includes an investment in an unnamed land lease community business in Australia.
Outside of the region, MREP has invested in US warehouse developer and investor Logistics Property Company; UK-based rental housing platform Goodstone Living; European sustainable office developer Edge; and US self-storage specialist LaTerra Storage.
Active in Asia Pacific
With A$30.7 billion of global assets under management across core, core plus, and opportunistic strategies as of June 2023, Macquarie Asset Management’s real estate division has been actively deploying capital in the Asia Pacific region, with James Kemp, the fund manager’s head of Asia Pacific real estate, telling Mingtiandi last November that Japan is a key market for logistics investment.
“Globally, many real estate investors are still underweight on Asia Pacific, and we believe Japan currently stands out as the investable market in the region,” said Kemp.
The fund manager has invested in a number of Asia Pacific logistics platforms over the last 15 years, including having been an early backer of regional player Logos Group (now part of HKEX-listed ESR Group) and once ranking as its largest shareholder.
In addition to logistics, Macquarie Asset Management’s property funds have invested in Australian build-to-rent platform Local:Residential and New Zealand residential community developer Winton.
Macquarie Asset Management’s other divisions have been boosting their commitments to data centres, with the fund manager revealed to be in due diligence for the purchase of the Hanam Data Center, a 40MW facility set to launch this year in Gyeonggi province outside of Seoul, after being selected by Korea’s IGIS Asset Management as the preferred bidder earlier this month.
In 2022, Macquarie Asset Management acquired a minority stake in Virtus Data Centres, the UK digital infrastructure unit of Singapore’s ST Telemedia Global Data Centres, through its Macquarie European Infrastructure Fund 7.
The company is currently managing a sales process for Australian hyperscaler AirTrunk, which could value the data centre operator at $9.8 billion. A consortium led by Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets acquired an 88 percent stake in AirTrunk in 2020.
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