Daiwa House’s property management arm will continue to manage the assets located in the Kanto and the central Chubu regions
Blackstone has acquired four logistics facilities in Japan from Daiwa House Industry for ¥55 billion (£0.40 billion).
The four facilities are located in the Kanto region, which includes Tokyo, as well as the central Chubu region.
Under the sale agreement, Daiwa House’s property management arm will continue to manage the assets after the sale.
Keiichi Yoshii, president of Daiwa House Industry, said his group had entered into an agreement for the sale of the properties to a special purpose entity managed and operated by an affiliate company of the Blackstone Group and Tosei Asset Advisers, manager of Blackstone’s Japanese multifamily assets.
The sale was part of his company’s strategy to recycle capital into further expanding the group’s domestic logistics development business and to grow the DPL brand that Daiwa had built up in Japan, he said.
In addition, we have entered into an agreement with Blackstone Singapore that covers co-operation on the promotion of our development of and investment in logistics facilities in the United States and Europe, Yoshii said.
Along with this sale, we aim to expand our presence in the United States and Europe by establishing a platform for regular exchange of information regarding market trends and both companies’ experience, networks, resources and the like, Yoshii said.
The Daiwa transaction follows Blackstone’s purchase a year ago of a logistics portfolio from Singapore’s Mapletree for £0.72 billion (¥100 billion).
In his most recent earnings statement, Blackstone’s chief financial officer, Michael Chae, said logistics was the firm’s largest exposure overall and comprised over one-third of the real estate portfolio.
