(Bloomberg)—Brookfield Asset Management Inc. is weighing a sale of its North American industrial-property business IDI Logistics, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
The Canadian investment firm has interviewed banks to advise it on a sale of the company, which could fetch $5 billion, according to the people, who asked not to be named because the matter is private. The business is owned by Brookfield’s real estate arm, Brookfield Property Partners LP.
A deal for IDI Logistics would follow Brookfield’s sale last year of its European warehouse business, Gazeley, for $2.8 billion to Singapore’s Global Logistics Properties Ltd. IDI Logistics has 33 million square feet (3.1 million square meters) of assets under management as well as sites to develop an additional 20 million square feet of distribution facilities, according to a press release last month.
The shift toward online shopping is luring investors into industrial real estate at a time when sales of other types of properties have slowed. Purchases of industrial buildings surged 34 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, to $20.9 billion, according to research firm Real Capital Analytics Inc. Since then, deals have included Blackstone Group LP’s agreement last month to buy Gramercy Property Trust and Prologis Inc.’s proposed acquisition of DCT Industrial Trust Inc.
Brookfield bought IDI’s predecessor, IDI Developments International Inc., for $1.1 billion in 2013.
To contact the reporters on this story: Gillian Tan in New York at [email protected]; Scott Deveau in New York at [email protected] To contact the editors responsible for this story: Daniel Taub at [email protected] Christine Maurus
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