Exeter Property Group, a Plymouth Meeting, Pa., real
estate firm, is poised to sell its industrial portfolio in a deal valued at $3
billion.
The transaction, first reported in PERE newsletter, is
scheduled to close next week. The buyer for the firm’s 55 million square feet
of industrial space is Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and PSP Investments.
The properties were acquired with the first two funds
that Exeter raised. The company deployed that money to buy more than $2.6
billion in properties between 2007 and 2014.
The report from PERE said that the transaction involves
the properties to “be rolled over into a new core vehicle that will continue to
be managed by Exeter. The firm will maintain a small stake in the assets but
the vast majority of the interest will be held by ADIA and PSP. The core
vehicle, however, will be unrelated to Exeter’s second industrial core fund,
Exeter Core Industrial Club Fund II, which the firm is currently marketing.”
Ward Fitzgerald, president and chief executive of Exeter,
declined to comment on the report.
The deal ranks among some other mega industrial
transactions completed this year and is one of the biggest involving a
Philadelphia area real estate firm. Among the other mega industrial portfolios
that traded this year involved Blackstone Group completing an $8 billion sale,
Prologis in a $5.9 billion acquisition and Industrial Income Trust selling its
properties for 4.5 billion.
Exeter was formed in 2007 by Fitzgerald, who spent 14
years at Liberty Property Trust (NYSE: LPT), and Tim Weber, who was a partner
at Terramics Property Co., to leverage a fund into acquiring industrial,
big-box warehouse, manufacturing and flex space across the United States.
Exeter developed a portion of its properties as well.
Exeter raised the funds with capital infusions from
university endowments, state pension funds, insurance companies and financial
institutions from the United States, Europe and Asia. With the sale, many of
its partners are expected to be exiting their investment. Some of them include
Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement System, New York State
Teachers’ Retirement System and the New Jersey Division of Investment.
Source: Philadelphia
Business Journal
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