Investa Group’s $3 billion unlisted office landlord, ICPF, will submit an offer to Morgan Stanley to buy out its management rights at the end of the week, paving the way for a break-up of the real estate empire.
US-based Morgan Stanley snapped up Investa Group via one of its property funds, MSREF VI, in 2007, and after selling a bundle of directly held skyscrapers to China’s sovereign wealth fund, CIC, earlier this year, hoped to execute a clean exit by offloading the management platform to a single party.
Instead the US bank is confronting a far more complex proposition, with Investa in danger of fracturing.
But the messy conflicts over the platform pale into insignificance compared to the lofty valuations on both the directly held assets and the land portfolio which will be sold to Proprium Partners, in a deal first revealed by DataRoom.
The private equity firm has forked out close to $350m for the development arm, taking Morgan Stanley’s cash bounty to close to $3bn.
However, even this larger than anticipated figure will leave its investors in MSREF VI underwater.
Elsewhere, and as first revealed by DataRoom, billionaire retail entrepreneur Brett Blundy relaunched the initial public offering of his property company Aventus yesterday and is hoping to tap public market investors for $303.3m. The overhauled float has been priced at $2 per unit.
Under the terms of the deal 151.7 million units in Aventus will be sold in a bookbuild executed by Macquarie.
Earlier this year Blundy was forced to withdraw the Aventus offer amid lacklustre support.