'Rise of the stakers': Why Japanese firms are buying up US and European managers

Transaction activity has at last been picking up in the private real estate market after a multi-year slowdown. But one area that has stayed consistently busy has been the dealmaking environment for property fund managers themselves.

A string of deals dating back to last year has seen fundraisers band together to boost their assets under management, diversify their client offerings and seek to capture a greater share of capital from an increasingly disparate set of global investors and capital sources. One trend that has emerged of late has involved several manager stake sales that fit a similar paradigm: Large Japanese corporations, often with ties to the hefty investment arms of major insurance businesses, acquiring US- or Europe-based asset managers with sizeable real estate exposure.

From last week’s PERE exclusive on insurer Tokio Marine buying a majority stake in US real estate debt fund manager ACORE Capital, to Mitsui Sumitomo announcing the purchase of an 18 percent stake in Barings, to Mitsubishi Estate buying a majority stake in London-based Patron Capital – a deal which officially closed in the last week – and multiple other deals this year, one thing is clear: Japanese buyers represent a cohort of investors with serious appetite for private asset managers with inroads in the Americas and Europe.

Is it a trend? What is driving the activity? And what does it portend for the managers being acquired, the consolidators doing the acquiring, and those positioning themselves as the next targets? The latest episode of The PERE Podcast highlights several of these deals, with host Greg Dool in conversation with PERE editor Evelyn Lee and senior reporter Harrison Connery.

Later in the episode, we also hear from Patron founder Keith Breslauer for an update on his firm’s transition to Mitsubishi ownership and whether the market can expect to see additional similar deals moving forward.