Prologis Makes Play For €21B Urban Logistics Giant

Prologis has made a bid to buy European urban logistics business Mileway from Blackstone for more than €21B ($23B, £18B) in what would be the largest deal ever for a nonlisted real estate portfolio. 

Last month, Blackstone announced it agreed a deal with a group of investors to recapitalise Mileway, the European last-mile industrial business it has been building up for the past five years. That deal would see new and existing Blackstone investors buying into a new vehicle that would only own Mileway. It is currently owned by a variety of Blackstone’s opportunistic funds. 

A "go-shop" process was set in train to make sure the existing investors that own Mileway are getting the best price. That process sees Blackstone’s advisor, Morgan Stanley, take the business to the wider market to find out if anyone is willing to pay more than the price being offered by the recapitalisation.

Blackstone Managing Director Peter Krause is a keynote speaker at Bisnow’s Industrial and Logistics Transformation event in London on 29 March.

React News reported Prologis has submitted a bid that would exceed €21B, the only party that has made an offer. The bid is only indicative at this stage, it said, so the recapitalisation could still end up going ahead. 

React said Prologis, the world’s biggest industrial and logistics property owner with a market capitalisation of $118B, would not bring in a partner for the deal. That would make a rights issue to fund at least part of the deal likely. In financial results, Prologis said it had $5B of available cash and debt facilities at the end of 2021.

Mileway comprises about 1,700 assets totalling 158M SF across 10 countries and almost 100 cities. Prologis’ portfolio totals 1B SF across the world. 

Demand for urban logistics assets from big investors is high right now. Tuesday morning Kennedy Wilson announced that its European JV with Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC has been extended from $1B to $2.5B. 

GIC will take a 20% stake in Mileway if the proposed recapitalisation goes ahead.