A Weil team led by Corporate partners Philip Rosen and Shayla Harlev is acting as counsel to Verde Realty Operating Partnership, L.P., a majority-owned subsidiary of funds managed by Brookfield Property Partners LP, in connection with the $1.1 billion acquisition of Industrial Developments International Inc. (IDI) from a subsidiary of Japan’s Kajima Corp. Based in Hamilton, Bermuda, Brookfield is an owner, operator, and investor in commercial properties. Through Verde’s purchase of IDI, which is based in Atlanta, Brookfield and its institutional partners will gain a network of 75 distribution facilities operating in 12 US states for a total of 27 million square feet of industrial distribution space. They will also add IDI’s 49 million square feet of future development projects and third-party property management business. Brookfield is purchasing about 25 percent of IDI; its partners will acquire the balance of the company.
With the addition of IDI’s assets, Brookfield will have a logistics real estate portfolio totaling over 62 million square feet of operating assets and more than 79 million square feet of future development in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and China, making it one of the largest owners of industrial and logistics facilities in the world. Brookfield Property Partners was recently spun off from its Canadian parent, Brookfield Asset Management Inc. Weil advised Brookfield Asset Management in the $866 million acquisition of Verde Realty by BSREP Industrial, L.P., a fund managed by the parent company’s Brookfield Property Group (Canada), and in Brookfield Asset Management’s acquisition of 22 percent of General Growth Properties Inc., the second-largest US mall owner.
In addition to Philip Rosen (New York) and Shayla Harlev (Boston), the Weil team advising Brookfield Property Partners includes Real Estate partner Samuel Zylberberg (New York); Tax partner Scott Sontag (New York); Executive Compensation and Benefits partner Michael Nissan (New York); Technology and IP Transactions partner Charan Sandhu (New York); Environmental partner Annemargaret Connolly (Washington, DC); Complex Commercial Litigation partner Patrick O’Toole (Boston); Executive Compensation and Benefits counsel Steven Margolis (New York); Mergers & Acquisitions associates David Laibstain (Boston), Kyle Junik (Boston), Gabriel Gershowitz (New York), Andrea Bidegaray (Boston), Edward Guo (Boston), and Yussef Abdel-Aleem (Boston); Real Estate associates Melissa Meyrowitz (New York) and Anne Catherine Podolsky (New York); and Tax, Benefits & Executive Compensation associates Joshua Gelfand (New York), R. Todd Hatcher (New York), and Rosemary Morgan (New York).
