CIM to sell minority stake

The Japanese conglomerate Mitsui is set to acquire 20% of Los Angeles-headquartered real estate and infrastructure fund management firm CIM Group.

Japanese conglomerate Mitsui & Co is to take a 20 percent stake in CIM Group, a Los Angeles-headquartered real assets firm.

As its first foray into the US real estate asset management business Mitsui established a special purpose entity, Sabre Investments, to make the acquisition and also to invest in several of the funds that CIM manages. Mitsui’s total investment will be $450 million to $550 million.

Mitsui, through its subsidiaries, manages a public logistics REIT (Japan Logistics Fund), a listed comprehensive J-REIT (MIRAI Corporation), and private funds.

However, due to poor performance in Japan caused by lasting low interest rates, Japanese investors’ capital is expected to flow increasingly into overseas real estate and infrastructure investments, the firm said.

CIM is a real assets manager with approximately $19 billion in assets under management offering investment strategies in opportunistic, core/stabilized, value-add real estate, real estate debt, and infrastructure.

The firm manages this capital through private funds and public REITs primarily targeting urban real estate assets such as office buildings, retail centers and multi-family properties and infrastructure assets mainly in North America.

Mitsui will support marketing activities of CIM’s funds to the Japanese market through Japan Alternative Investment, Mitsui’s wholly-owned subsidiary, with an aim to raise several hundred billion yen of new capital from Japanese investors in the coming years.