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Blackstone Puts Up $6B for Colony Industrial
Blackstone Real Estate Partners has agreed to acquire Colony Capital’s industrial real estate platform for $5.9 billion. The deal for Colony Industrial occurs shortly after Blackstone closed on its $18.7-billion acquisition of GLP’s U.S. logistics platform.
“This acquisition of high quality warehouses demonstrates our continued strong conviction in logistics and positive e-commerce trends,” said Nadeem Meghji, head of real estate Americas at Blackstone. “As retailers continue to shorten delivery times and expand their last mile footprints, we believe warehouses in dense population centers will continue to experience outsized demand growth.”
Based in Dallas, Colony Industrial was formed with Colony Capital’s 2014 acquisition of Cobalt Capital Partners, founded and led by Lewis D. Friedland. Since then, the portfolio has doubled in size.
At its present size, the Colony Industrial portfolio encompasses 60 million square feet of mainly light industrial buildings in 26 U.S. markets, with significant concentration in Dallas, Atlanta, Florida, Northern New Jersey and California. The deal with Blackstone also includes Colony’s 51% ownership interest in a four-million-square-foot portfolio of bulk distribution assets.
“Lew Friedland and the Colony Industrial team have executed flawlessly, achieving and even surpassing the goals of our original investment thesis five years ago,” said Colony Capital president Darren Tangen.
He added that the sale “allows Colony to both achieve compelling returns for our investors and generate significant liquidity, which among other uses, will help accelerate our ongoing transition into digital real estate and infrastructure.”
Willkie Farr & Gallagher served as legal counsel, Morgan Stanley and Eastdil Secured served as financial advisors, and CBRE National Partners served as real estate advisor to Colony Capital. Simpson Thacher & Bartlett served as legal counsel to Blackstone.
For comments, questions or concerns, please contact Paul Bubny
- ◦Sale/Acquisition
