SANTA ANA, CA-Grubb & Ellis Co. has agreed to sell its 51% stake in Alesco Global Advisors to Lazard Asset Management, a key step toward the sale of its Daymark Realty Advisors subsidiary, the Santa Ana-based company said this morning. The sale of Daymark, in turn, is considered a key to a possible sale of Grubb & Ellis.
Alesco is the real estate investment fund business of Grubb & Ellis, which acquired its stake in the company through the Daymark subsidiary in 2007. Alesco focuses on real estate securities and manages three registered mutual funds.
Grubb & Ellis president and CEO Thomas D’Arcy, in a statement this morning, said that the agreement to sell Alesco "is a positive step forward in the sale of Daymark Realty Advisors, which is a key part of our plan." He said that Alesco's fund manager, Jay Leupp, "will benefit from having access to the scale and resources of Lazard Asset Management, one of the world’s preeminent asset management firms.”
Terms of the transaction, which is subject to approvals by the mutual funds’ boards of trustees and shareholders, were not disclosed. It is expected to close in the third quarter of this year.
Grubb & Ellis spun off the Daymark subsidiary in February as a wholly owned and separately managed subsidiary that is responsible for the management of its tenant-in-common portfolio. It later retained FBR Capital Markets & Co. to explore strategic alternatives with respect to Daymark and its portfolio, which includes over 8,700 multi-family units and approximately 30 million square feet of real estate.
The deal to sell its 51% interest in Alesco is the latest in a series of efforts by Grubb & Ellis both to sell Daymark, which is the company's tenant-in-common subsidiary, and to either sell or merge Grubb & Ellis itself. As reported by GlobeSt.com, the Santa Ana-based company hired JMP Securities in March to advise it on strategic alternatives. More recently, Grubb & Ellis said that it had made progress in the planned sale of Daymark and "received initial indications of interest from numerous strategic and financial buyers" for the parent company.
Among those that expressed interest in Grubb & Ellis was Santa Monica, CA-based Colony Capital LLC, which invested $18 million in Grubb & Ellis and signed a 60-day exclusivity period to explore a larger strategic transaction. Colony’s exclusivity period ended May 29, allowing Grubb & Ellis to engage in discussions with additional parties, while continuing discussions with Colony.
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