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U.S. giant Blackstone has completed one of the largest European property deals in the past few years, buying a portfolio of French industrial and retail assets for about €2B (£1.75B).
Blackstone bought the portfolio from Proudreed, the French investment division of M Core, Green Street News reported.
M Core is the property company of the Midlands-based MacDonald-Hall family, which has a total portfolio of £5.7B in the UK, France, Poland and Romania. The UK arm includes London & Cambridge Properties, the family’s first investment company, and Evolve Estates, which undertakes regeneration projects.
The deal with Blackstone would involve the sale of Proudreed’s light industrial and logistics portfolio.
Industrial and logistics remains Blackstone’s largest asset class in Europe. In early September, it won a takeover battle to buy listed logistics investor Warehouse REIT for £490M.
Proudreed’s 2024 annual report puts the total size of its portfolio at €3.2B, with industrial and logistics accounting for 61% — 53% light industrial and 8% logistics.
The industrial portfolio generates about €110M of income a year and totals about 25M SF. It is spread across France, with about a quarter around the Paris region.
The rest of Proudreed’s portfolio is retail and office assets. The total portfolio has about €1.5B of debt secured against it, the accounts say.
Even though the industrial gold rush has slowed since the height of the pandemic, it remains one of the most resilient asset classes in Europe. A total of £31B was invested in EMEA industrial assets in the two years up to July this year, data from Colliers shows, making it the second-largest asset class, after offices.
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