Record year for brick investments Amancio Ortega. The founder and largest shareholder of Inditex invested around 2,760 million euros this year Pontegadea, according to the calculations of this newspaper with the information from their major operations. The last known acquisition was that of a luxury skyscraper in Seattle (USA) for around 300 million euros, as was announced yesterday. I have never invested so much in the same year.
The last trophy for the Galician businessman was the tower kiara in Seattle. It’s his second foray into apartment rentals after completing October’s purchase of Tower 19 Dutch in Manhattan, also in the US market, for which he paid nearly $500 million.
In this way, Pontegadea continues to strengthen itself in the United States, a stable market, in addition to diversifying its portfolio by strengthening the residential segment, since this real estate agency has traditionally invested in office buildings and spaces in the main commercial axes as well as hotels.
Along with the acquisition of the Kiara building and 19 Dutch in Manhattan (the first operation in the luxury rental business), we must add the strong commitment to logistics in the US. Through his family office Pontegadea, the billionaire has made his largest history of investments by acquiring seven logistics centers in the past few months in the US states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Tennessee, South Carolina, Virginia and Texas, for which around 900 million to Realty Income corp be paid out. Ships are leased to operators such as Amazon, Home Depot, Nestlé or Fedex, among others.
In addition to the frenetic activity in Pontegadea this year, there is also interest in the European headquarters of Goal (Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram) based in Dublin. In September it became known that the acquisition of this office complex for 550 million is being negotiated, but the operation has not yet been completed.
your biggest purchase
Ortega has already started the year with a stomp. In January, it made its largest single acquisition with the takeover of the office complex Royal Bank Plaza in downtown Toronto (Canada) for about 1,150 million Canadian dollars, just over 800 million euros at the exchange rate at the time. The family office acquired this asset from two Canadian pension funds. Specifically, Ontario municipal employees and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.
In April, Pontegadea chose Scotland by acquiring the Glasgow city center an office building under construction for about 240 million.
Ortega’s strong investment coincides with the largest dividend in the history of Inditex, a group in which he controls 59.294% of the capital. The textile group distributed 2,898 million among its shareholders in 2022, of which 1,718 million went to the founder of Zara, who generally buy real estate with their own funds and finance a part of the building purchase with credit only in a cumbersome manner and to a small extent. In addition, it reinvests a relevant portion of Pontegadea’s own profits. Last year, this real estate agency generated rental income of 647 million.
Other assets
Although most of its dividends are reinvested in rental real estate assets, the company has also recently diversified into renewable energy and telecoms. At the end of July it was announced that it had invested 27 million to take control of 49% of the Kappa photovoltaic complex operated by Repsol in Manzanares (Ciudad Real). On the same day, it acquired 5% of Enagás Renovable’s capital for 3.5 million.
Thanks to these purchases, Pontegadea has become the country’s largest real estate agent by net worth Merlin and Colonial. At the end of 2021, this portfolio reached a valuation of 15,264 million, the highest valuation, with a year-on-year growth of 8.4%. The 2,760 million investment is expected to be added to his portfolio this year.
The businessman, whose fortune is estimated at $63.1 billion according to Forbes, has historically bet on unique, large and well-located assets in the world’s major cities for his property purchases, as is the case with his new trophy in Seattle.
Since the pandemic began, Pontegadea’s investment had been more modest. 2020 was a year with no known investments and in 2021 it accelerated with more than 450 million withdrawals despite selling its stake in Telxius Towers for 710 million. That year, the company got into renewable energy by acquiring 49% of Repsol’s Delta wind farm for $245 million.
However, the previous year 2019 was very fruitful for the businessman as he spent more than 2,000 million in assets in London and more specifically in Seattle.
Kiara’s purchase
The tower that Ortega is acquiring now has 41 stories and is located north of downtown Seattle at 111 Terry Avenue. The building has 461 rental units, including one- to three-bedroom units. The skyscraper was designed by Studio Weber Thompson and completed in 2018. Since 2020, he has been in the hands of Canadian fund Oxford Properties Group, which bought him for around $320 million (€301 million at current exchange rates), according to local media The Registry. In addition, it has a commercial area of 1,500 square meters.
The seller of the Kiara building is the Toronto multinational fund, which has $82,000 million in real estate assets under management, primarily with capital from Canada’s Omers pension fund, which is linked to Ontario officials.
Another relevant acquisition by Pontegadea in Seattle
Amazon. It’s not the first time Ortega has landed in Seattle. The Inditex founder became Amazon’s landlord in this city by buying part of the e-commerce giant’s headquarters in the Troy Block complex for around €655 million. So the seller was USAA Real Estate, the real estate division of the US Army-affiliated insurer.
Goal. Two years later, he paid Vulcan (the real estate company founded by Paul Allen, the late Microsoft co-founder) around $380 million for Arbor Blocks to become Meta’s landlord.