Deals

CPPIB buys $350m stake in US industrial properties

Canada’s largest pension plan bought a stake in a 722-asset industrial portfolio with Global Logistic Properties and three other investors.

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The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) continued its global push into industrial real estate with a joint venture it announced Tuesday.

The Toronto-based pension plan’s investment arm acquired a 10.6 percent ownership stake in a US logistics property portfolio for $350 million, forming a joint venture with Singapore-based Global Logistics Properties (GLP) and three unnamed investors.

The 722 properties, totaling 115 million square feet, are spread across the US. The portfolio had a gross purchase price of $8.9 billion, according to a statement from the firm, and GLP will continue to manage the portfolio.

“Our investment in one of the largest and most diverse industrial portfolios in the US enables us to build scale in this sector with high-quality, well-located assets,” said Peter Ballon, CPPIB’s managing director and head of real estate investments Americas, in a statement Tuesday.

CPPIB managed C$268.6 billion ($202.8 billion) as of June 30. The pension plan has put some of that capital to work in industrial real estate across the world recently, creating a joint venture in southern India to buy a $220 million industrial park in June and staking £200 million in a UK logistics partnership earlier this month.

CPPIB has also partnered with GLP on several other logistics deals. In Brazil, the pension plan bought a C$226 million stake in a 32-asset portfolio for properties in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro in 2012. CPPIB also has a 40 percent stake in GLP Brazil Development Partners I, a $1.5 billion joint venture with GLP and the government of Singapore’s investment arm, and an equal-sized stake in GLP Brazil Income Partners II, a $1.1 billion portfolio of assets in the same two cities with GLP and a North American institutional investor.

GLP, one of Asia’s largest warehouse owners, made inroads into US industrial real estate space last year through a joint venture with Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, buying The Blackstone Group’s IndCor Properties for $8.1 billion. The 117 million square feet of industrial space was one of the largest sales of industrial properties ever.