By Jenniffer
B. Austria | Posted on Jul. 01, 2013 at 12:02am
[
manilastandardtoday.com ]
Property
developer Ayala Land Inc. is close to acquiring five office buildings in
Bonifacio Global City owned by Apollo Global Real Estate of US billionaire Leon
Black.
A
highly-placed source said Ayala Land submitted the highest bid to acquire
Apollo’s stake in the five office buildings with a total gross leasable area of
147,000 square meters.
The source
said Ayala Land’s bid was P5 billion higher than the next offer, which was
submitted by Robinsons Land Corp. The
source did not specify the exact bids of Ayala Land and Robinsons Land.
Both groups
earlier expressed interest in bidding for Apollo’s stake in the five office
towers.
Apollo is
selling its controlling stake in the five office towers in one of Manila’s
prime business districts. The towers were built by The Net Group of businessman
Carlos Rufino.
Rufino,
president of the Net Group, which owns a 10- percent stake in the five towers,
said earlier his company was open to retaining its stake in the buildings,
while declining to elaborate.
Apollo Global
Real Estate, which has about $9 billion of assets, is the property investment
arm of New York-based Apollo Global Management LLC, a global alternative
investment manager with $113 billion in assets run by Black, who was a
co-founder of the company.
The towers on
sale include the Net Plaza, Net Quad, Net Cube, Net Square and Net One Center
which are fully leased. The tenants include Accenture Plc, HSBC Holdings Plc,
Deutsche Bank AG and JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Strong demand
combined with the growing outsourcing industry is expected to drive growth for
the Philippine office market, the sales document showed. Bonifacio Global City
is positioned to benefit from the tight office supply in the other two central
business districts, Makati and Ortigas Center, according to the document.
Both Ayala
Land and Robinsons Land are both bullish about the office space sector and are
aggressively pursuing their expansion plans.
Ayala Land
said earlier it was expanding its portfolio of office buildings with the opening
of 60,000 square meters last year, bringing its total available office space to
509,000 square meters.
Strong demand
from the business process outsourcing industry has been boosting the growth of
the office space sector, supplemented by increasing requirements from the
headquarters of multinational companies.
Meanwhile,
Robinsons Land is set to complete two office buildings with a combined leasable
space of 40,000 square meters. These new office buildings will add 41 percent
to its current inventory and end the year with 273,000 square meters.
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