Allianz partners Keppel to buy Shanghai's Hongkou SOHO for US$525m

ALLIANZ will partner Singapore's Keppel Group to buy Shanghai's Hongkou SOHO for US$525 million.

Keppel's Alpha Asia Macro Trends Fund (AAMTF) III will hold a 40 per cent stake and the remaining 60 per cent will be equally split between Allianz and Keppel Land China.

Both Allianz and Keppel Land are investors in AAMTF III, which is managed by Alpha Investment Partners Limited (Alpha), a subsidiary of Keppel Capital. Allianz Real Estate undertook this transaction on behalf of a number of Allianz companies.

Allianz Real Estate, the US$53 billion real estate investment and asset manager within the Allianz Group, implemented the transaction as part of its strategy to allocate around 5 per cent of its global real estate portfolio to the Asia-Pacific region.

Designed by leading Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, Hongkou SOHO is a stabilised premium office and retail mixed-use development. It offers a total leasable area (GLA) of 70,042 square metres, comprising 65,304 sqm office and 4,738 sqm retail space. The asset was completed at the end of 2015 by SOHO China and has been awarded LEED Gold certification.

On the investment, Rushabh Desai, head of Allianz Real Estate Asia-Pacific, said: "We are attracted to Shanghai as a leading global 24/7 city. This stems from our confidence in the growth prospects of the commercial real estate markets in this gateway city as well as the potential for assets like Hongkou SOHO to take advantage of the future expansion of CBDs Puxi and Pudong."

He added that co-investing with local experts like Keppel is an approach its investors favour for the region and Allianz looked forward to broadening its activity in this area.