Private equity firm Warburg Pincus and Lendlease announced on Aug 1 that they have reached the final closing on a life sciences real estate joint venture platform.
Each party will commit 50% of the co-investment capital over the next few years as the new platform attracts third party investors and additional capital and seeks to grow into a multi-billion-dollar platform.
Headquartered in Singapore, the new platform will focus on investing, acquiring, developing, constructing, managing and operating real estate projects in the life sciences and R&D real estate markets in Asia Pacific.
The platform is seeded with two of Lendlease’s existing businesses — a high-barrier-to-entry life sciences project construction management business and a specialised investment management business — and already has its first investment vehicle LINO, which currently owns Leaf Minatomirai, a 24,000 sq m innovation and R&D workplace in Yokohama, with its asset enhancement initiative recently completed.
Since the 2000s, Lendlease has worked on over 200 projects in Asia Pacific for leading industry players with many repeat clients, including the delivery of two-thirds of the greenfield life sciences facilities in Tuas Biomedical Park in Singapore and more than 90% of the biotech plants in the precinct.
Warburg Pincus has been investing in Asia real estate companies and platforms for nearly 20 years. It is one of the largest and most active investors in Asia real estate, with over US$8.5 billion ($11.37 billion) invested in over 50 real estate ventures, including some leading platforms that Warburg Pincus co-founded alongside ESR, Princeton Digital Group, StorHub, Vincom Retail and BW Industrial.
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Over the past 10 years, Warburg Pincus has actively engaged in Asia's life sciences real estate and R&D space, building significant depth through a number of highly specialised ventures, including DNE in China and a partnership with Eastgate in Japan.
