HBS Global’s New Half-Billion-Dollar Buddies

A joint venture from Hudson's Bay Co. and Simon Property Group has unloaded $533M of equity to three investors.

By Barbra Murray, Contributing Editor

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Hudson Bay’s Company logo

First there were two, now there are five. HBS Global Properties, the retail real estate joint venture launched this year by Hudson’s Bay Co. and Simon Property Group, has sold $533 million of equity to three investors. Ivanhoé Cambridge, Madison International Realty and a large U.S. pension fund now own a piece of the mushrooming HBS Global portfolio, which is valued at $4.5 billion.

It was HBC that sold a half-billion dollars of its equity to Ivanhoe, Madison and the pension fund, which invested $250 million, $150 million and $133 million, respectively. HBC, which announced in September that it would sell as much as $600 million of equity in HBS Global, will couple the proceeds with a bit of cash in hand to shrink its $1.085 billion of outstanding term loan B borrowings to $500 million.

Post equity sale, HBC continues to hold the majority interest in HBS Global, with a 63 percent share of the joint venture, and Simon’s stake remains the same at 13 percent. Ivanhoé Cambridge has an 11 percent ownership interest and representation on HBS Global’s board of directors, Madison International holds 7 percent and the unidentified pension fund claims 6 percent of the joint venture.

In a prepared statement Lee Neibart, CEO of HBS Global, said, “We are excited to combine the expertise of our new investors with our team to continue to grow our portfolio through anticipated accretive acquisitions in the United States and Europe.”

It’s been an eventful few months for HBS Global, which officially closed in July with Simon’s contribution of a total of 42 owned or ground-leased assets. In September, the joint venture — which focuses its acquisition efforts on credit tenant, net-leased and multi-tenanted retail properties in the U.S. and abroad — acquired GALERIA Holding, parent company of Germany’s leading department store GALERIA Kaufhof, in a transaction valued at $3 billion. Today, HBS Global’s portfolio consists of 83 premier properties encompassing 17.8 million square feet, 5.4 million square feet of which is in the U.S.

Logo courtesy of BusinessWire.

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