Evergrande Shares up as Interest Payment Comes Due

Chinese real-estate developer Evergrande is due to make an interest payment of $83.5m on an overseas bond. The firm has debts of over $300bn.

Legal and General Goes Long Science Investment

Legal and General are developing a science and innovation district as part of a £4bn partnership with the University of Oxford. Begbroke Science Park will be extended over an adjacent site of 14 hectares. Laura Mason, CEO of Legal and General (and an Oxford Engineering alumnus) announced the expansion as a boon to the life sciences and health sectors.

LaSalle Investment Management's Encore+ Aims to "set new standards" in Sustainability

Encore+ will work with Accumulata Real Estate Group to build a seven-floor hybrid timber office block, in Munich's Westend district, on a site acquired in 2019, on Elsenheimerstrasse. It will include an environmentally friendly building management system. Key players include David Ironside at Encore+ and Daniel Manta, project manager at Accumulata.

Brookfield Asset Management Buys Up $2bn of Indian Office Space

Brookfield Asset Management, an alternative asset manager with $550bn in AuM, with headquarters in Toronto, has bought up $2bn of rent-yielding office and co-working spaces from RMZ Corp. Accenture, Google and HSBC are examples of clients of RMZ's spaces.

Blackstone Real Estate Buys Out the Bellagio

BREIT (Blackstone Real Estate Investment Trust) has formed a joint venture to buy out Bellagio Real Estate for $4.25 billion. The joint venture owns the property and receives rent payments. MGM Resorts will lease back the property and be responsible for all capital expenditures. Blackstone President and COO, Jon Gray, remarked his team were "big believers in MGM Resorts and Las Vegas". JP Morgan was financial advisor to MGM Resorts. Citigroup and Morgan Stanley were finanical advisors to BREIT.

Qatar Said to be Buying New York's Plaza Hotel for $600m

The Plaza Hotel on Fifth Avenue (Central Park South) in midtown Manhattan, which opened its doors in 1907, is currently 75% owned by Sahara India with the remainder owned by Kingdom Holdings.
It is down the road from the Ritz-Carlton Central Park.

Qatar's Katara Hospitality is said to be buying full ownership, would add an iconic American hotel to its collection. Katara's investments include 50% holding in The Savoy and an investment in The Connaught in London.

Shared Workspace Provider WeWork in Expansion Drive

WeWork, a provider of co-working and office space, is looking to expand, having recently taken over its Chinese rival, Naked Hub (founded in China in 2007) for an estimated $400m. WeWork's co-working spaces provide fast Internet, 24/7 building access, daily cleaning, mail handling, printers and more. SoftBank reportedly invested $300m in WeWork in March 2017; by August 2017 this was reported as $4.4bn investment from SoftBank and its related Vision Fund which includes other investors. $1.4bn was earmarked for expansion in China, Japan and Southeast Asia. WeWork's CEO Adam Neumann articulated the company's vision as attempting to "humanize" the way people work.

Sidebar - Real Assets

The Carlyle Group has $40bn of real assets under management ($17bn, or 42%, of which is real estate) as well as energy, including renewable energy, assets. The US real estate team is spread across many metropolitan areas including Los Angeles.

David Bonderman's Baby TPG Breaks into the (Bonded?) Warehouse Business

TPG Capital, founded by:

• David Bonderman, educated at University of Washington and Harvard Law School. He has developed the Bonderman's Program at the University of Washington for unstructured international travel and study. He lives in Texas, as befits the name of his firm.

has bought up a portfolio of warehouses across the European Union  from warehouse specialists P3 owned by Bahraini firm Arcapita. P3 has properties in both the EU and GCC. Arcapita's CEO is:

• Atif Abdulmalik, established Arcapita in 1997. He has a Bachelors in Accounting and Finance, from Saint Edwards University Texas.

Arcapita also has investments in technology companies, predominately in the United States.

How Much Property does the Crown Estate have?

Ans: about £8bn worth.

The firm owns the very visible assets of Regent Street and St. James. It also owns Windsor Great Park.

Less well known, is that the Crown Estate also owns most of the sea bed around the UK out to 12 nautical miles (a nautical mile is roughly 1.85 km, contrasting with a "regular" mile of 1.6 km).

The Energy Act of 2004 also granted the Crown Estate the right to license renewable energy generation within these limits.

Companies involved in developing these offshore wind farms include Centrica Renewables and Dong Energy (headquartered in Denmark), which has a 50% stake in the London Array.

The Crown Estate can also grant leases for CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage) projects which store unwanted carbon dioxide under the sea bed.

It can also grant leases for wave and tidal projects linked to its ownership rights over the sea bed. The Estate has so far leased over 40 sites for tidal energy projects.

UK Property Owner Crowned with New Profits

Super-prime properties performed really well for the owner of Regent Street (and promote of Regent's Quadrant 3 Scheme in which £300m was invested) as the value of the Crown Estate's property portfolio surged to £8bn for the first time. Net profit was up 4% from the previous year and the Treasury (by which, of course, one refers to Her Majesty's Treasury) gave a sign of glee. The Crown's Marine Estate that owns most of the UK coastline also profited from investment in wind farms (generating 1.5% of the UK's electricity!!!).