DLA Piper

Driving successful real estate investments and transactions

We are a single source of legal advice for the real estate, tax, capital markets, and related needs of many of the world’s leading real estate investors, investment advisors, and developers.

We can advise and support you through all stages of real estate investments and transactions: our real estate lawyers understand the issues so we can get your deals completed efficiently. Every week, we close deals around the world that range from single assets to global portfolios, across a wide range of mainstream and specialized assets classes.

Our size, capability and experience in all of these aspects make us a go-to law firm for portfolio transactions.

We have structured, negotiated and documented the full range of joint venture transactions. Our clients include public and private pension funds and pension fund advisors, sovereign wealth funds, other institutional investors, private equity funds, public and private REITs, and real estate developers.

“The DLA Piper team works with you to get a deal done – they are always available to help you navigate the various processes and there is always a specialist for whatever requirements you may have. Everyone is well briefed and the entire team is delivery focused.”

Chambers 2022

Our work includes advising on portfolio joint ventures, platform joint ventures providing for the acquisition of assets over time, and joint ventures in which one or more parties contributed properties. We also have experience with joint ventures formed to act as sponsors in private equity funds and real estate funds.

We bring a sophisticated understanding of the increasingly complex aspects of real estate transactions. This includes the related use of real estate investment trusts (REITs), blocker entities and inter-company debt, as well as advising on ERISA in the US. We’ve also responded to the growing appetite for indirect investment into real estate via investment vehicles, be they listed or non‐listed real estate companies, real estate investment funds or REITs.

Our team is also fully integrated with colleagues and practices worldwide, bringing together real estate, financing, regulatory, tax and transactional advice to ensure a full-service approach.

Experience

Advising AXA Investment Managers on the acquisition, as part of a core strategy on behalf of a client, of the entire issued share capital of NorthStar Realty Europe Corp. (NYSE: NRE), a NYSE listed REIT, which owns a significant portfolio of 12 office properties and two hotel assets with a combined value of EUR1.1 billion located in key European cities in Germany, the UK and France.
Representing Ping An Insurance on the 30% share acquisition from and joint venture with Sun Hung Kai Properties in developing the commercial/retail complex at the West Kowloon Station in Hong Kong with acquisition price of around HKD15 billion.
Advising Carlyle in relation to the disposal to Ivanhoe Cambridge of a 430,000 m2 logistics portfolio (17 assets) and the Hub&Flow brand. The deal was structured as a framework share deal relating to 17 PropCos.
Advising Allianz Real Estate on various investments including:

its co-investment into a fund (alongside co-investors Gaw Capital Partners, Goldman Sachs and Great Wall), which has acquired 16 properties in Hong Kong.
its acquisition of 100% stake (acquired through two stages with 50% stake each) in a portfolio of five modern logistics assets in China which are owned by a Gaw Capital managed fund. The portfolio includes five projects in the areas of Shanghai, Jiaxing, Foshan, Wuhan and Shenyang.

Oxford Properties Group and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board in connection with the USD2.1 billion sale to an affiliate of Google, of a new, state-of-the-art building in New York City at the site of the former St John’s Terminal. Oxford transformed the former freight rail station into a 21st century, 1.3 million SF building in the heart of Hudson Square that will be part of a major new Google campus in New York City.
Harrison Street Real Estate in connection with a US$1.2 billion acquisition/joint venture with American Campus Communities of a portfolio of public-private-partnership (P3) student housing facilities located on the campus of Arizona State University.
Ivanhoé Cambridge in connection with a programmatic joint venture with Lendlease, involving an initial capital commitment of USD500 million for the acquisition and development of life science projects in high-growth life science clusters across the U.S. (including Boston, San Francisco and San Diego).
CyrusOne, a premier global REIT specializing in design, construction, and operation of more than 50 high-performance data centers, in connection with the USD670 million sale of four Houston data center assets to DataBank Holdings Ltd.
Griffin Realty Trust, Inc., in the USD1.132 Billion sale of a 53-building national office portfolio to a joint venture of Workspace Property Trust and GIC (Minister for Finance (Singapore)). Also signed at closing was a contract for the sale of a second pool of 8 office buildings to the Workspace/GIC venture, pending CFIUS approval and satisfaction of other agreed closing conditions. GRT retains a passive interest in the Workspace/GIC JV.
Ventas Life Science & Healthcare Real Estate Fund in connection with the US$1.1 billion acquisition of three life science buildings in South San Francisco, CA.
Oval Real Estate in the acquisition of the entire property asset base of the Janus Henderson PAIF – 38 properties in the UK with circa 300 tenants, valued in excess of GBP900m. We set up the JV between Oval and its investors and established a number of special purpose vehicles into which the properties were acquired, dealing with all of the corporate, tax and financing requirements of the transaction.
Blackstone in the GBP3bn acquisiton of Bourne Leisure Group, which operates through the Haven, Butlin’s and Warner Leisure Hotels brands across 56 sites in the UK.