Kennedy Wilson to Go Private Following $1.7B Sale
The firm's CEO and other executives will lead a consortium to acquire the company.
Kennedy Wilson Holdings Chairman & CEO William McMorrow is leading a consortium that will acquire the firm and take it private in a $1.65 billion all-cash transaction. McMorrow and other senior executives at the company are partnering with Fairfax Financial Holdings to form the consortium of investors.
McMorrow and the other Kennedy Wilson executives involved in the purchase will continue to lead the firm following the transaction, with Fairfax controlling a majority of the company’s economic interest. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2026.
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The purchase price of $10.90 per share represents a 10.2 percent premium from the $10.25 that the consortium offered in November, according to Reuters. At that time, the group argued that taking the firm private would reduce administrative costs and enable management to focus more on strategy.
This is the industry’s second blockbuster enterprise-level deal to be announced in less than a week, following Nuveen’s planned acquisition of Schroders.
Latham & Watkins and Ropes & Gray are Kennedy Wilson’s legal advisors in the deal.
Longtime partners get even closer
Kennedy Wilson and Fairfax Financial have partnered on numerous projects over the years. In May 2020, the two firms launched a $2 billion debt platform to pursue first mortgage loans secured by high-quality real estate in the Western U.S., Ireland and the U.K.
In February 2022, Fairfax agreed to make a $300 million strategic preferred equity investment in Kennedy Wilson, which said it would use the proceeds to fund its development pipeline and real estate investments, as well as pay off its unsecured bank borrowings in full.
The two firms later teamed up in June 2023 to acquire a $5.7 billion loan portfolio from Pacific Western Bank, which expanded Kennedy Wilson’s debt portfolio to $7 billion.
Kennedy Wilson goes private again
William McMorrow first acquired Kennedy Wilson, which was founded in 1977 as a real estate auction company, in 1988 before listing it on the Nasdaq in 1993. The firm previously went private in 2004, before going public again in 2009 on the New York Stock Exchange.
Kennedy Wilson has expanded its multifamily footprint in recent years, most notably acquiring Toll Brothers’ Apartment Living platform in September 2025 for $347 million. Today the firm controls almost 41,000 multifamily units, in addition to 24.6 million square feet of industrial, retail and office assets.
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