Dealmaker: Blackstone Real Estate To Acquire $3.4B Lab Office Portfolio

Blackstone Property Partners Life Sciences, New York, agreed to acquire a 2.3 million square foot portfolio of lab office buildings from a Brookfield Asset Management real estate fund for $3.45 billion.

The firms said they expect the transaction to close in first-quarter 2021.

Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC and Wells Fargo Securities LLC served as Blackstone’s financial advisors; Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP was legal advisor on the transaction. Eastdil Secured served as Brookfield’s lead financial advisor and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP provided legal advice. Citigroup Global Markets Inc. provided financial advisory services to Brookfield.

More than 90 percent of the portfolio being acquired is concentrated in Cambridge, Mass. Cambridge is among the fastest-growing lab office submarkets in the country due to nearby universities and the largest cluster of pharmaceutical companies in the U.S. The Cambridge portfolio Blackstone is buying is in East Cambridge, adjacent to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Upon closing, Blackstone will become the largest life science office owner in Cambridge, and Blackstone’s life science real estate portfolio company, BioMed Realty, will have an enterprise value approaching $20 billion.

Blackstone Head of Real Estate Americas Nadeem Meghji said the transaction shows the firm’s continuing belief in the life sciences space both broadly and within real estate.