MoFo represented clients advised by BlackRock Real Estate (“BlackRock”) in an acquisition of two blocks of grade-A office buildings at Waterfront Place, Shanghai from PGIM Real Estate, a property investment affiliate of Prudential Financial. Waterfront Place is located in the southeastern corner of Changfeng Ecological Business District, a rapidly evolving industrial cluster area at Suzhou Riverside. The Shanghai government designated an area of 220.9 hectares for the development of this district, which is among the first batch of contemporary industrial services cluster areas developed in Shanghai The established, mixed-use development acquired by BlackRock consists of blocks E and G, covering a gross floor area of over 27,000 sqm with underground parking. The two buildings are a 20-minute drive, or three metro stations, from Shanghai’s Jing’an Temple commercial hub.
This transaction represents a successful and effective cross office and cross practice group collaboration by the MoFo team. The acquisition work was led by Maria Wang and supported by Zhenyu Wang and Melissa Liu from the Shanghai office. Maria Wang is a partner in MoFo’s Shanghai office. Ms. Wang specializes in real estate transactions, and she has broad experience in real estate acquisitions, joint ventures, financing, project developments and management. Ms. Wang has represented international and domestic real estate private equity houses, fund managers, financiers and developers in a variety of real estate related transactions, covering different stages from development and construction to management, operation and disposal of real estate projects.
The financing work was led by Singapore partner Yemi Tépé and supported by Yun Chen from the Singapore office and Rakesh Grubb-Sharma from the London office. In addition, Hong Kong partner Marcia Ellis, senior consultant Stephen Birkett, Euzane Lee, trainee solicitors Marcus To and Mark Hu from the Hong Kong office, William Akman from the Singapore office as well as London partner Vladimir Maly and Dmitry Lyulev from the London office also assisted the team on the transaction.
The deal marks BlackRock’s second successful acquisition of office projects in Shanghai in 2017.
