A sale of Logicor by its owner Blackstone this year would put the European logistics sector even further under the spotlight.
Neither Blackstone nor Logicor were willing to comment on reports of a sale or listing of the circa €10bn firm.
The increased influence of e-commerce has rendered the sector more interesting to long-term investors, with income from logistics more predictable and less volatile than that of the office and retail sectors.
In interviews, Mo Barzegar, CEO and president of Logicor, has previously said the firm could be listed, with such a move being first reported in 2014.
A similar sale was carried out by Blackstone in the US in 2014, when Blackstone sold IndCor Properties, its US industrial platform, to GIC for $8.1bn (€6.52bn). Funds affiliated with Blackstone Real Estate Partners VI and VII sold the wholly owned company.
The deal followed rumours of an IPO for IndCor, which owns and operates a 117m sqft portfolio.
Logicor has built a similarly-sized portfolio of around 13m sqm of assets across Europe, with a focus on the UK, France, Germany and The Nordics. Logicor last year invested in Finland for the first time, buying a stake in Certeum, which holds a 1.3m sqm portfolio, from Sponda and Varma Mutual Pension Insurance.
Logicor last year paid €536m for a portfolio sold by Austria’s Immofinanz. The 1m sqm portfolio included assets in Germany and Central and Eastern Europe. Assets have also been bought from Goodman’s European Logistics Fund in France and Germany, as well as from AXA Investment Managers-Real Assets in Belgium.
The firm recently bought a European logistics portfolio from Standard Life’s European Property Growth Fund. The eight assets, in Belgium, Germany, Italy and Hungary, were bought in an off-market transaction.
