Trent Iliffe to Launch New Asia Industrial Venture as ESR Buys Out Logos Founders

Warehouse giant ESR has acquired the remaining interest in Logos Property held by the Australian developer’s founders, having completed the buyout six months ahead of a scheduled target date.

ESR has concluded deals to acquire the 13.6 percent equity stake held by co-founders and co-CEOs Trent Iliffe and John Marsh and former Southeast Asia head Stephen Hawkins, the Hong Kong-listed group said Friday in a release. Hawkins sold his portion of the stake last month. Financial details regarding the exits were not disclosed.

Coinciding with his departure from the ESR universe, Iliffe is set to launch an independent industrial venture involving assets previously developed or acquired by Logos in India and Vietnam, according to sources who spoke with Mingtiandi.

Logos had entered India in 2017 through a joint venture with locally based Assetz Property Group, before expanding that venture with backing from Ivanhoe Cambridge and Quadreal.

The company launched into Vietnam in 2020 with a $350 million joint venture, which quickly acquired a project in Bac Ninh province near Hanoi. Iliffe’s new venture is said to be taking over some of Logos’s three Vietnam assets and all five of its India properties, with news of the initiative having first been reported by PERE.

Smooth Exit

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

As part of the full integration of Logos into ESR, Marsh will stay on to chair the combined infrastructure business and the combined Australia and New Zealand platform within the group. He will also sit on the group investment committee.

“In growing the infrastructure platform, I will look to build on the significant achievements already made by the team, including the over $1 billion of equity raised and the multiple in-country renewable energy joint ventures established,” Marsh said in the release.

For his part, Iliffe will remain with ESR on a consulting basis for a period of six months to oversee a smooth transition process, before pursuing his new endeavours.

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

“Under the leadership of John and Trent over the last 14 years, Logos has become a new economy powerhouse with a sizeable $23 billion in AUM,” said ESR co-founders and co-CEOs Stuart Gibson and Jeffrey Shen. “We would like to express our appreciation to John and Trent for their entrepreneurial prowess, collaborative spirit, and dedication to the business.

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, according to ESR.

Prepping for Privatisation

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.