A Major DC Merger Between JBG And Vornado Could Be In The Works
After its merger with New York REIT fell through in August, The JBG Cos may have found another way to become a public company.
The Chevy Chase developer is in talks with Vornado to acquire its DC portfolio, Bloomberg first reported. Vornado's DC business, led by Mitchell Schear (whom we snapped at last year's DC State of the Market), has a 16M SF office portfolio that could be valued between $4B and $6B.
NY-based Vornado has been publicly considering spinning off its DC business since last year, so this acquisition would come as no surprise.
"They’ve been fairly public that they’re going to spin their DC portfolio and JBG has been very public that they want to go public," Stifel Nicolaus analyst John Guinee, who follows Vornado, tells Bisnow." I think they're both intent on doing it, it's just a question of price."
John says he would consider the deal more of a merger than an acquisition. He added that a deal like this has many complicated tax rules, plus institutional partners who need to opine, so he wouldn't expect a deal to get done overnight. [Bloomberg]
