Canada’s Manulife Financial Corporation and Hong Kong’s ESR Cayman are teaming up to buy a portfolio of logistics properties in China from a joint venture between Dutch pension manager PGGM and ESR for 1.7 billion RMB (US$243 million).
The portfolio comprises four core assets with over two million square feet of net rentable area across China, the three companies say in a joint statement on July 3.
Manulife and ESR, a logistics property investment firm, have formed a joint venture to buy the properties from Redwood China Logistics Fund, a partnership between the Hong Kong company and PGGM.
This is Manulife’s first industrial investment in China, and will increase the company’s total Asia Pacific real estate portfolio to 4.9 million square feet, the statement says.
According to Kenny Lam, Manulife’s senior managing director and head of its Asia real estate investments, the company considers China industrial property as a “favourable” asset because of its defensive nature and strong growth potential.
“This acquisition fits well with our long-term investment strategy for the Asia Pacific market,” he says in the statement.
For PGGM, the sale is in line with its strategy “to realise profits on some of our completed and stabilised China development assets as we continue to build a strong track record in our China investments”, adds Thijs Schoenaker, the pension manager’s director for Asia Pacific private real estate.
Toronto-based Manulife had around $900 billion of assets under management as of December 2019.
PGGM had 252 billion euros ($283 billion) of total assets at the end of 2019.
