Blackstone Tops List Of Global Real Estate Funds
Blackstone is reportedly the buyer of Kennedy Wilson’s $422 million multifamily portfolio.
AMSTERDAM–Last month Kennedy Wilson announced it had sold a 41.5% stake in a six-asset multifamily portfolio for $422 million. It has since been reported that the Blackstone Group was the entity that picked up the portfolio.
Score another deal for the biggest real estate fund manager in the world.
The company has topped a list of global real estate fund managers for the second year running, with assets under management of $214.9 billion up by $47.8 billion from the previous year, according to the Fund Manager Survey 2018, published by INREV, ANREV and NCREIF.
The survey also reveals an 11% uplift in total AUM among global real estate funds from $2.7 trillion to $3.14 trillion in 2017.
“Real estate is clearly firing on all cylinders with the top ten players making very sizeable gains,” said INREV CEO Lonneke Löwik in a prepared statement. “One of the really exciting elements of this year’s survey is that non-listed funds have proved a powerful engine for overall growth. It’s a picture we’ve seen emerging over the past four years and all the indications are that this trend is set to continue.”
For the first time, managers needed to achieve AUM in excess of $116.7 billion to feature in the top five, which this year included: The Blackstone Group, Brookfield Asset Management, PGIM, Hines and TH Real Estate. In 2015, the equivalent figure was less than $70 billion.
Brookfield Asset Management posted total real estate AUM of $172.5 billion, a modest 5.3% increase from the previous year bringing it to second place. In third position was PGIM with $141.6 billion of real estate AUM. Hines and TH Real Estate had $122.1 billion and $121.1 billion respectively.
PGIM topped the list for North American strategies with AUM of $111.6 billion, much larger than the $73.5 billion recorded by AXA Investment Managers – Real Assets, which earned first place among managers operating European strategies. In Asia Pacific CapitaLand Limited ranked first with $53.5 billion while The Blackstone Group earned its top place among global strategy managers with $109.1 billion, ahead of Prologis with $83.1 billion.
While growth was greatest among large fund managers, with the top 10 managers accounting for 38.7% of the global total, gains were made across the board with average AUM for all 162 survey participants reaching $19.4 billion, compared with $15.8 billion in 2016, according to the survey.
