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The world’s largest private equity investor, Blackstone, has scored over $7.8 billion in the third instalment of its opportunistic real estate fund series, per a filing on the SEC website.<\/p>\n
The fund juggernaut has now achieved over 86% of its $9-billion target for the Blackstone Real Estate Partners Asia III (BREP ASIA III) fund despite the ‘periodic reassertion of COVID-19’ that Jonathan Gray, president and chief operating officer at Blackstone, acknowledged in its second-quarter earnings call as an obstacle for both growth and market stability in Asia.<\/p>\n
“Combined with our BREP funds in Europe and Asia, we will have $50 billion of opportunistic real estate capital to deploy globally, only 12% of which is invested today. This is a very advantageous position given the current environment,” Gray added in the same event.<\/p>\n
Participating in Blackstone Real Estate Partners Asia III are predominantly US state funds, including New Mexico State Investment Council<\/a> (NMSIC), Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund<\/a>, State Board of Administration of Florida<\/a>, Minnesota State Board of Investments and Virginia Retirement System — which committed up to $200 million in January this year.<\/p>\n BREP ASIA III is part of Blackstone’s Asian opportunistic real estate fund that targets the acquisition of well-located but undermanaged properties under the strategy buy-fix-sell. Attempting to replicate the success of its precursor funds, the third instalment aims to invest in diverse asset classes, including new economy assets, multifamily and commercial properties in the Asia-Pacific region.<\/p>\n Its investment destinations will scatter across China, Japan, India, Australia, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand and Taiwan, according to NMSIC<\/a>.<\/p>\n DealStreetAsia understands that Blackstone has been divesting the $7.1-billion capital it raised for the second instalment of the fund series, which was closed in 2018, in value-add assets across gateway cities in Asia.<\/p>\n Their investment destinations include Japan where the firm had snapped up 19 multifamily properties in partnership with Alyssa Partners for $157 million in May, according to a report first published by Mingtiandi.<\/p>\n Blackstone did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.<\/p>\n The news comes less than a month after Blackstone’s competitor LaSalle Investment Management fund announced that it had earmarked $2.2 billion for its value-add property vehicle, LaSalle Asia Opportunity VI<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n