Deals

EXCLUSIVE: Forum fully invests third Asia fund

The global private equity firm has made the final investment for its $375 million pan-Asia fund as it gears up to launch its successor.  

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Forum Partners has fully invested the $375 million capital raised via its third pan-Asia opportunistic real estate fund, PERE can reveal.

The global private equity firm whose Asia operations are led by managing director Gregory Wells is understood to have made the final investment from Forum Asia Realty Income III Fund late last month when it acquired a Grade B commercial asset building in Osaka for around $25 million. The deal values the asset at $50 million.

With the three-year investment period of the fund nearing its close, Forum Partners has successfully deployed the capital in a total of 13 real estate investments across Asia. Close to 50 percent of the capital is understood to have been invested in China, mainly in the residential sector, around 25 percent in Australia, and 15 percent in Korea. 

Forum declined to comment. However PERE has learned from sources that the firm already has also divested from five of these deals, which amount to approximately 40 percent of the total invested capital.

The fund, brought to the market in late 2010, was launched with a strategy to make investments in the structured equity and debt of real estate companies. In early 2012, the firm reached a final close on the fund after raising capital mainly from US and European LPs.

Among the investments made via the fund was Forum Partners’ maiden alternative real estate investment in Asia. In December last year, it acquired a portfolio of student housing assets in New Zealand from a listed Australian property group Ingenia in a deal that marked its first investment in the country. The firm acquired the portfolio along with one of its local partners, the Sydney-headquartered property advisory firm Castle Partners, for NZ$49.4 million.

The firm is also understood to be plotting the launch of its fourth Asia-focused fund with a fundraising target of around $500 million. News of the fund first emerged early last year. Similar to Forum’s previous Asia-focused funds the fund’s strategy will target the origination of mezzanine loans to developers and real estate projects.

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