OMERS’ Oxford Properties Acquires M7 Real Estate to Access More European Deal Flow
Posted on 01/26/2021
Oxford Properties Group acquired London-based M7 Real Estate Limited (M7), a pan-European investment and asset manager. The investment is in line with Oxford’s global capital allocation strategy which has seen it both enter new geographic markets and increase its weighting to the logistics, multifamily, and life sciences sectors. Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS) owns Oxford Properties Group.
While M7 now invests across a variety of regional multi-tenanted asset classes, it was originally formed in April 2009 as a specialist in light industrial and urban logistics, which remains its largest sector, and together with retail warehouses, accounts for half the €4 billion of assets currently under management. M7 has a team of approximately 225 employees in 14 countries across Europe. M7 manages a portfolio of around 620 assets comprising 45.2 million square feet on behalf of a mix of separate account clients as well as comingled investment funds, in which it also coinvests. The acquisition provides Oxford with a specialist asset and investment management platform which will be transformational in its ability to accelerate its deployment of capital into multi-let industrial and urban logistics across Europe. Oxford had previously stated its ambition to deploy £3 billion of capital into the European logistics sector, and the acquisition gives it immediate scale to do so.
M7 will continue to operate as a standalone business under the day-to-day management of the current leadership team, led by Richard Croft and David Ebbrell.
M7 manages assets across Europe on behalf of investors such as Blackstone Group, Starwood, Centerbridge, HIG Capital, and M&G. M7’s holdings in asset management software firm, Coyote, and other PropTech ventures will help further Oxford’s strategy to access new real estate technologies.
Oxford and its portfolio companies manage approximately CAD$ 80 Billion of assets with almost a third of Oxford’s capital invested in logistics, warehousing and digital commerce strategies across North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific.
The acquisition is conditional on receipt of regulatory approval, with completion expected in the first half of this year.