The Blackstone Group, the world’s largest real estate private equity firm, is planning to list its own marquee income-producing commercial assets in India and office properties jointly owned with the Embassy Group under its Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT), two people with direct knowledge of the matter said.The REIT, registered in 2017 as Embassy Office Parks, is sponsored by Blackstone and Bengaluru-based realty developer Embassy Property Developments. It is currently in the process of filing the draft red herring prospectus for the listing.
The Blackstone-Embassy alliance is expected to raise around $1 billion (.`6,850 crore) through this issue, which will be India’s maiden REIT. The papers are likely to be filed over the next couple of weeks.
“Blackstone is adding a few of its own assets in Mumbai, the Delhi-National Capital Region and Pune to the portfolio, a part of which will be listed as a REIT,” said one of the people. “With a fundraising estimate of around $1 billion, the portfolio would value at over $5 billion.”
The addition of Blackstone’s own prime assets across three major property markets would expand the size of the portfolio being considered for the proposed listing. With this, Blackstone is putting together integrated office parks and city-centre buildings in the REIT.
Embassy Office Parks owns around 35 million sq ft of office space in Bengaluru and Pune. Most of these office properties are fully leased and occupied.