PIMCO to Buy Columbia Property Trust for $3.9B
By Celia Young September 7, 2021 11:16 am
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Investment manager PIMCO agreed to buy real estate investment trust Columbia Property Trust for $3.9 billion.
The deal, announced Tuesday morning by the REIT, would give each Columbia shareholder $19.30 per share in cash and take the REIT private.
The acquisition comes at the heels of another offer for Columbia — Arkhouse Partners, Sapir Organization and 8F Investment Partners made a $2.24 billion offer in March to purchase Columbia for $19.50 per share in cash. Now, PIMCO — an autonomous subsidiary of German financial services company Allianz SE — has swooped in with its own deal.
“We continue to believe that high-quality office buildings in major U.S. cities offer long-term value for our clients and Columbia has assembled a modernized, well-located portfolio of assets that we expect will perform well in the years ahead,” John Murray, PIMCO’s global head of private commercial real estate, said in a statement.
Columbia’s board of directors unanimously voted for the acquisition, according to a statement from the REIT. The company expects the transaction to close as soon as the end of this year, so long as Columbia’s shareholders approve and closing conditions are met.
Once the transaction is complete, Columbia’s stock will no longer be listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
The offer comes after Columbia reported its first net loss of the pandemic in the second quarter of this year, The Real Deal reported.
The REIT saw revenue, at $63.4 million, decline 20 percent during the second quarter from the same time last year and drop 1.5 percent from the first quarter. Columbia canceled its third-quarter conference call because of the acquisition, according to the statement.
Columbia tapped Morgan Stanley as its financial adviser for the acquisition offer, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz as its legal adviser and Eastdil Secured and JP Morgan as its financial advisors, according to the statement. Cushman & Wakefield’s Adam Spies and Doug Harmon acted as real estate advisers to PIMCO. The brokerage declined to comment.
Celia Young can be reached at cyoung@commercialobserver.com.
