What’s Behind the Surge in M&A, Privatization Activity?

March 23, 2026

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A special report on the factors that are driving the deals—and whether the trend will continue.

Nuveen’s headquarters at 730 Third Ave. in New York City. *Image courtesy of Yardi Matrix*

Commercial real estate experts expect the recent string of mergers, acquisitions and take-private transactions to continue this year.

Headlines about billion-dollar M&A deals began appearing in mid- to late-2025—including the Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Partnership’s plan to acquire all equity in Aligned Data Centers for about $40 billion. The new year started off with more megadeals such as Nuveen acquiring London-based Schroders in a £9.9 billion, or $13.5 billion, all-cash agreement that could create a global asset management firm with about $2.5 trillion of assets under management.

The activity is driven by myriad factors including public market dislocations, value discrepancies, a growing acceptance of interest rates, recovering debt market, and private equity firms and funds with billions of dollars of dry powder looking for investments.

Bar Mor, Co-Founder & CEO of Agora. *Image courtesy of Agora*

“Well-capitalized private investors and larger platforms are stepping in to acquire assets and companies at more attractive valuations,” said Bar Mor, co-founder & CEO of Agora, a fintech/SaaS company specializing in real estate investment management software. “On the other hand, smaller or more leveraged players, and even some public REITs trading below their underlying value, are becoming natural targets.”

In many cases, they are also becoming targets for privatization.

“The larger funds see this opportunity to create more value by going private and not being exposed to the public markets, which aren’t valuing the companies fairly,” noted Jon Gitman, partner & head of originations at BridgeInvest.

2026 deals take off

In early February, Brookfield Asset Management private real estate fund agreed to acquire Peakstone Realty Trust, a Southern California-based industrial REIT, for $1.2 billion cash. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter, when Brookfield will take the company private.

Days before that deal was announced, Ares Alternative Credit Funds and Makarora Management closed on the $1.2 billion take-private all-cash acquisition of Plymouth Industrial REIT.

Jon Gitman, Partner & Head of Originations at BridgeInvest. *Image courtesy of BridgeInvest*

BlackRock is among the investors in the AIP consortium planning to acquire Aligned Data Centers, a privately held company which operates more than 50 data campuses around the world. It is currently owned by Macquarie Asset Management and will remain private after the transaction closes during the first half of this year. The consortium also includes Global Infrastructure Partners, MGX, Microsoft and NVIDIA, with the Kuwait Investment Authority and Temasek providing additional funding.

Earlier this month, Alexander & Baldwin, Hawaii’s largest grocery-anchored shopping center owner, became a private company following a $2.3 billion acquisition by a joint venture formed by an affiliate of MW Group and funds affiliated with Blackstone Real Estate and DivcoWest. The joint venture is investing more than $100 million in capital improvements across the former REIT’s 4 million-square-foot portfolio that includes 21 retail centers, 14 industrial developments, four office properties and fee interests in 146 acres of ground lease assets.

Kennedy Wilson agreed to be taken private in February in a $1.65 billion deal led by its CEO William McMorrow, other KW senior executives and Fairfax Financial Holdings, a Toronto-based financial services company. The firm’s portfolio includes about 24.6 million square feet of industrial, retail and office assets.

Solid portfolios at discounts

Chris Wimmer, senior director at Fitch Ratings, said investors are acquiring solid operating portfolios of commercial real estate, which have been priced attractively relative to their underlying value.

Christopher Wimmer of Fitch Ratings — Chris Wimmer, Senior Director at Fitch Ratings. *Image courtesy of Fitch Ratings*

“More often than not, it is public equity or valuations that drive these types of transactions. Investors are looking to buy portfolios of real estate in the public markets at wide enough discounts to the underlying property value to generate a meaningful return,” Wimmer told Commercial Property Executive.

He noted some of the property types that are performing well are trading at a discount, including industrial, multifamily and self storage.

“Certain other sectors may be expensively priced given high levels of demand, such as data centers or health-care REITs, or may be difficult to price at all given secular challenges, such as office,” Wimmer added.

S&P Global noted deals where public REITs were taken private in 2025 totaled about $6 billion. An early January report stated real estate M&A activity involving U.S. publicly traded REITs increased during the second half of 2025, with six announced deals totaling nearly $16.3 billion. In the first half, there were only two deals with a combined transaction value of $1.72 billion.

John Perry, Senior Managing Director of Equity Capital Markets, CBRE Investment Banking. *Image courtesy of CBRE*

“You’ve got 155 equity REITs in the U.S. and almost half of those with market caps of $2 billion or less. So, you’ve got a number of sub-scale, cost of capital disadvantaged platforms that are out there trying to compete as asset traders and it’s challenging. So that is certainly in part what’s been driving this increase in take-private activity that we’ve seen,” noted John Perry, senior managing director, Equity Capital Markets, CBRE Investment Banking.

Sergio Altomare, co-founder & CEO of Hearthfire Holdings, a real estate private equity and development company focused on self storage, said there’s a tremendous backlog of capital that needs liquidity at both a sponsor and LP level.

Sergio Altomare, Co-Founder & CEO, Hearthfire Holdings. *Image courtesy of Hearthfire Holdings*

“We’re seeing this at the BlackRock, Blackstone level. The privatizations and what they’re solving are market dislocation. You’ve got rates trading at discounts, (but) you need to provide exits to smaller platforms or over-levered owners,” he said.

However, Altomare contends this is not a normal M&A cycle.

“It really is a continuation of a longer-term consolidation trend that’s been accelerated by capital markets pressure and increasingly, what I believe, is a lot around data and data strategies around AI (artificial intelligence),” he said.

Activity ticks up in 2025

James Park, senior managing director, CBRE Investment Banking, said his firm started to see activity, or as he put it “green shoots,” in mid-summer 2025.

“People were feeling more comfortable and better about the broader landscape for investing. From a macro standpoint, people were feeling maybe a higher conviction that this is a good time or, (that) or we’re starting the next up cycle,” Park told CPE.

“I think a lot of it is driven by the debt markets and the recovery in the debt markets, which obviously is a big driver of take privates for financial buyers,” he added.

Park also pointed to “an understanding and acceptance of (interest) rates, that we are in an environment where we’re going to be in 4 to 4.5 percent for 10-year treasuries. This is the new normal.”

Both Perry and Park said that there also seems to be a greater willingness on the parts of public company boards and management teams to consider bids from interested buyers particularly if they have been trading at a discount to perceived NAV.

Jahn Brodwin, senior managing director & co-leader of the Real Estate Solutions practice at FTI Consulting, Inc., in New York City, said small- to mid-sized public REITs are targets in part because of the amplified cost of being a public company.

Brodwin notes there’s always an ebb and flow of cycles when companies are doing IPOs and the opposite – private companies go public followed by period of stability, which then precedes a time of lots of privatizations.

Jahn Brodwin, Senior Managing Director & Co-Leader of the Real Estate Solutions practice, FTI Consulting Inc. *Image courtesy of FTI Consulting Inc.*

The buyers tend to be big private equity firms including the obvious—Blackstone and KKR, who’ve done a number of privatizations in the retail and multifamily spaces, Brodwin said.

“They have billions of dollars of dry powder,” he noted.

Brodwin also said foreign investors are still active in the U.S.

“One, (real estate) is an inflation hedge, and it’s also a currency hedge,” Brodwin said. “Some people are buying long-term assets that have inflation protection and also have the currency stability that they’re looking for as a protection. They actually get two benefits versus U.S. buyers.”

Other buyers include ultra high-net worth families and family offices that look for particular types of assets for stability and long-term holds.