Investment firm The Blackstone Group led all companies in global real estate assets under management (AUM) with $283 billion, according to the Fund Manager Survey, GlobeSt.com reports.
The Blackstone Group finished ahead of Brookfield Asset Management ($204 billion) and PGIM Real Estate ($181 billion). Nuveen ($134 billion) and Hines (€133 billion) rounded out the top five managers on the survey’s list.
The total global real estate AUM was $3.6 trillion at the end of last year—a 15.7 percent increase over the $3.1 trillion recorded in 2018. It’s possible the figure could have been higher since some managers could not respond to the Fund Manager Survey because of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to GlobeSt.com. The AUM increase was attributed to more investor inflows and capital appreciation. The top 10 asset managers in 2019 made up approximately 40 percent of the total AUM—they each reached at least $96 billion, according to the survey.
Medium and smaller asset managers fared well in the Fund Manager Survey too, however. Their overall growth rate was 18.6 percent for medium managers and 11.5 percent for smaller ones. Additionally, the report noted particular sectors got a boost from customers’ continued changing habits. For example the increase in online shopping buoyed the logistics sector and helped Prologis lift its AUM almost 25 percent, GlobeSt.com reports. The jump from $96.1 billion to $119 billion in AUM was good enough to place Prologis sixth one the Fund Manager Survey list.
Location matters
According to the survey, the mangers focused on North American strategies comprised most of total AUM—36.6 percent. Europe was not far behind at 33.8 percent. When broken out by area, PGIM, which was second globally, led the North American rankings. Swiss Life Asset Managers, which wasn’t in the global top six, was number one manager in Europe ($101 billion AUM). The total did put Swiss Life in the overall top 10 list for the first time, however. The company’s growth fit a growing trend of investors using their platforms to raise and manage third-party funds.
The Fund Manager Survey revealed another trend—market consolidation. Twenty percent of the survey respondents said they were part of some sort of merger and acquisitions activity during the last decade. A third of the respondents said expanding their geographic footprint was a big reason for doing so, according to GlobeSt.
Joe Dyton can be reached at joed@fifthgenmedia.com
