Blackstone Acquires Canadian Real Estate Trust WPT to Expand Logistics Sector Investment

Stephen Schwarzman, Chairman and CEO of Blackstone
Photo by Reuters Yonhap News

[Asia Economy Reporter Byunghee Park] The world's largest private equity firm Blackstone is acquiring WPT, a Canadian real estate investment trust company, Bloomberg reported on the 9th (local time).

On the same day, Blackstone announced that Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust (BREIT) will acquire WPT for $3.1 billion (approximately 3.5566 trillion KRW), including debt. Blackstone stated it plans to pay $22 per share for WPT. The acquisition price per share is 17% higher than WPT's closing stock price on the 6th.

WPT primarily invests in commercial real estate in the distribution and logistics sector. It owns about 110 real estate assets, including warehouses and logistics centers, in U.S. cities such as Atlanta, Chicago, and Houston.

David Levin, a director at Blackstone, explained, "Logistics is one of the sectors with the most certain growth prospects as the e-commerce market expands." Levin added, "By acquiring the high-quality assets that WPT has already built, we will expand our entry into major U.S. logistics markets."

Blackstone has steadily increased its investments in the logistics market. Especially after the rapid expansion of the e-commerce market following the spread of COVID-19 last year, the logistics market has attracted even more attention.

In July last year, Blackstone acquired four logistics warehouses from Japan's Daiwa House for 55 billion yen (approximately 572 billion KRW). In June this year, it acquired a 54.93% stake in Soho China, a Chinese private real estate developer, from Soho China's founders, the Pan couple, for 11.769 billion yuan (approximately 2.0829 trillion KRW).

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.