Blackstone-backed Embassy Office Parks REIT (real estate investment trust) has raised Rs 3,680 crore ($501 million) through an institutional placement of its units.
The proceeds from this placement will be utilised to fund the REIT’s proposed acquisition of information technology park Embassy TechVillage (ETV) in Bengaluru for $1.3 billion, which was announced in November. The transaction is expected to close by the end of this month.
“The strong demand for our offering amid market uncertainties and the ongoing pandemic is testament to the confidence in Embassy REIT’s inorganic growth strategy of owning quality office assets, such as ETV,” said Mike Holland, chief executive officer of Embassy Office Parks – the first-ever REIT in the country.
“This institutional placement of new units diversifies our unitholder register, enhances the liquidity of our units, and is expected to facilitate the REIT’s potential inclusion in additional global benchmark equity indices,” added Holland.
The securities committee of the board of directors of Embassy Office Parks Management Services, manager to Embassy REIT, approved the issuance and allotment of 111,335,400 new units through this institutional placement in a meeting on Tuesday.
Listed in April 2019, Embassy REIT owns and operates a 33.3-million square feet (msf) portfolio. As part of the ETV deal, Embassy REIT will be acquiring 6.1 msf of completed area, 3.1 msf of under-construction area – of which 36 per cent is pre-leased to JPMorgan – and two proposed 518-keys Hilton hotels within the overall ETV campus as part of the deal. It will make Embassy REIT the largest in Asia Pacific in terms of area.
Source: Business-Standard