J.P. Morgan Asset Management acquired Aviva Investors' Asia-Pacific real estate business, said a spokeswoman for J.P. Morgan.
The deal, which has already closed, sees J.P. Morgan take on the entire 16-person team from Aviva Investors and $1.2 billion of diversified assets in Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Singapore across all real estate types, but primarily office and industrial real estate, the spokeswoman said. The firm already has a real estate presence in India and Greater China, in addition to the U.S. and Europe.
It is an expansion for J.P. Morgan's existing global real assets and real estate business. The spokeswoman said this acquisition “levels the playing field for us across the globe,” for the $1.7 trillion manager. The manager already has $82 billion of real estate, infrastructure and maritime assets under management across the globe.
The spokeswoman added that the value of the transaction was not being disclosed. The deal does not affect Aviva Investors' multimanager real estate strategies in Asia-Pacific, according to a news release by J.P. Morgan Asset Management.
“Growing in Asia-Pacific has been a strategic imperative for us as a global real assets solutions provider,” said Joe Azelby, head of J.P. Morgan Asset Management's global real assets unit, in the release. “With this acquisition, we have expanded our real estate investment capabilities, across the full risk spectrum from core to opportunistic strategies, to help our clients increase their allocations to dynamic growth markets in Asia-Pacific.”
In the same news release, Euan Munro, CEO at Aviva Investors, said the divestment of the Asia-Pacific real estate business was part of the manager's plans to simplify its business and move toward an “integrated operating model and organizational structure. … (W)e selected J.P. Morgan to help ensure stability and continuity for the investors in our Asia-Pacific real estate strategies.”
