Blackstone offloads 23

Blackstone offloads 23.6% for Rs 7065 crore

Various entities of Blackstone group sold 223.6 million shares or 23.6% stake in the Embassy Office Parks REIT at Rs 316 apiece.The total value of the transaction was Rs 7,065 crore — a discount of 4.85% to Wednesday’s closing of Rs 332.11.The REIT’s units closed over 1% lower than Tuesday’s close. Rs 310 was the floor price.

“As a sponsor of Embassy Office Parks REIT, we welcome the expansion of the REIT’s public float register to include more high-quality investors. We believe that this transaction underscores the success of REITs in India and demonstrates how the world’s leading investors view the criticality of well-run, high-quality REITs such as Embassy REIT in their portfolios,” Jitu Virwani, chairman of Embassy group said.Blackstone entities including BRE Mauritius Investments , BRE Mauritius Investments II, BREP Asia HCC Holdings (NQ) Pte Limited, India Alternate Property and others sold their stake, bulk deal data on the exchanges showed. APAC company XXII(3.6%), Fidelity Funds South East Asia Fund ( 1.4%) , Smallcap World Fund INC( 1.2% ) were the major buyers.

Kotak Institutional Equities and IIFL Securities managed the transaction.The Embassy REIT owns 45 million sq ft of office parks in Mumbai, Bangalore and other cities.Blackstone continues to be one of the largest commercial office landlords in India with 70 million sq ft. Apart from this, Blackstone owns 40 million sq ft in Warehousing and 12 million sq ft of Retail space. Blackstone has also ventured into Data centres and is building 2 data centres in Navi Mumbai.