GIC buys office building in Brazil

The Singaporean sovereign wealth fund has made its first wholly-owned direct real estate investment in Latin America with the purchase of an under-construction office building in Brazil.

GIC Private Limited has announced its first wholly-owned investment in Latin America by acquiring an office building in Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro. The Singaporean sovereign wealth fund declined to disclose the purchase price.

GIC is taking over the property from Hemisferio Sul Investimentos (HSI), a Sao-Paulo-based private equity real estate manager.

The building, Eco Sapucai, spread over 926,342 square feet in downtown Rio de Janeiro, is part of an office development project currently under construction and is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2015.

“Eco Sapucai is a welcome addition to our global portfolio of best-in-class assets. It is a quality asset in a prime location. We believe strong demand for this first-rate office property will translate into a stable income stream which suits GIC as a long-term investor,” Tia Miyamoto, regional head, Americas for GIC Real Estate said in a statement.

GIC has been on an active investment spree this year, venturing into new markets and expanding its real estate portfolio globally. In October, it made its first corporate investment in a real estate company in Turkey, acquiring a 20 percent stake in an Istanbul-based developer for €250 million. Within days, it announced its foray into New Zealand by forming a NZ$330 million (€205.66 million; $255.84 million) joint venture partnership with Goodman Property Trust, a subsidiary of the Goodman Group.

With some $315 billion in assets under management, according to PERE’s Research and Analytics division, GIC has also made some big-ticket acquisitions this year. Just last week, it tied up with Singapore-listed logistics real estate investment and development firm Global Logistic Properties (GLP) to acquire a logistics portfolio in the US from private equity giant Blackstone for a total of $8.1 billion. GIC committed 45 percent of the equity, while GLP accounted for the rest, for the 117 million square feet of logistics space across 36 US markets. Also in October, the state fund acquired the landmark Pacific Century Place office complex in Tokyo for JPY 170 million (€1.15 million; 1.43 million).