ESR plans to acquire ARA Asset Management, with US$95 billion in gross assets under management, for US$5.2 billion.

Following completion of the transaction, ARA’s business will be combined with ESR’s platform. The enlarged ESR Group will become Asia Pacific’s largest real estate and real asset manager powered by the new economy, and the world’s third-largest listed real estate asset manager. The combined AUM will reach US$129 billion, of which more than US$50 billion is in “new economy” real estate (logistics and data centres), making it the largest such platform in Asia Pacific.

The senior management of ARA and LOGOS — which ARA acquired a majority stake in during March 2020 — will join the enlarged ESR Group to drive its next phase of growth.

“Our vision has always been to build a leading fund manager focused on technology-enabled real estate, especially logistics and more recently data centres, on the back of major secular trends including t