Blackstone closing in on €1.1bn portfolio acquisition in Italy
Blackstone is closing in on a €1.1 billion deal to buy one of Italy’s largest portfolios of real estate assets belonging to Reale Compagnia Italiana (RCI), a private group founded in Milan in 1911.
The US private equity company has been granted exclusive negotiation rights and should sign the deal within days, according to reliable sources.
RCI, which is owned by over 300 shareholders, mainly old Milanese families, had decided to put the portfolio on the market a few months ago, appointing Goldman Sachs and Colliers International as advisors.
Other big players including Hines and Prelios were rumoured to be interested, but the advisors recommended Blackstone as the most suitable investor for such a large transaction.
The RCI portfolio includes many commercial buildings in the city centre of Milan and Turin, mainly offices leased out to law firms and other long-term tenants. It also has a strong retail component, including some of Milan’s best-known historic cafes like Bar Magenta and Caffè Cova in the celebrated via Montenapoleone and Turin’s Galleria Subalpina, a shopping arcade opened in 1874.
Blackstone, advised by Mediobanca, has been very active in Italy in the last few years, buying trophy assets like the former Palazzo delle Poste, a listed building in Milan’s Piazza Cordusio, but also amassing a large logistics portfolio across the country. Blackstone has also acquired a 35% stake in asset manager Kryalos, its long-standing partner in Italy.
If concluded as expected, the RCI portfolio acquisition would be the biggest deal in Italy in 2021, trumping Enpam’s sale of 68 assets to an Apollo Global Management fund for €842 million earlier this year.
The Blackstone/RCI deal would also have a positive impact on Italian transaction volumes for 2021. In Q2 this year commercial transactions volumes fell 10% to €1.8 billion, according to BNP Paribas Real Estate data.
