Real estate private equity firm Gaw Capital Partners on Thursday said it has acquired a 45% stake in Tokyo-based Agility Asset Advisers Inc. (AAA), as the Hong Kong-headquartered firm seeks to enhance its reach in the Japanese market.
The investment seeks to amplify deal sourcing and asset management capabilities and open up new avenues to access lower-cost Japanese capital and evergreen funding sources, Gaw Capital said in a release.
Post-financing, Gaw Capital and AAA’s parent company, Phillip Capital Group, will each take a 45% stake in the firm. The remaining 10% stake is held by Mutual Links Corporation (ML), whose majority shareholder is AAA’s founding president Kinji Kaiho.
Founded in January 2005, AAA is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Agility Holdings Inc., one of the member companies under Singapore-based financial group Phillip Capital.
The partnership will enable AAA to drive growth by redesigning and repositioning of under-utilised real estate assets in Japan and other new opportunities such as REIT initiatives, Isabella Lo, Gaw Capital’s managing director, principal – investments and head of Japan, said in the release.
The investment comes six months after Gaw Capital acquired a property located in Fuchu Intelligent Park, Fuchu City, Japan, through a fund under its management in May 2024, as the PE firm seeks to expand its presence in the data centre cluster that is within 30 km from central Tokyo.
The property is located close to two buildings — Meito Sangyo Building and Fuchu Building — which were acquired by Gaw Capital in 2021 and 2022, respectively. The two are currently undergoing redevelopment into carrier-neutral Tier III data centres as Phase I and II. The new property will be demolished and redeveloped into Phase III of the data centres to capture the expanding demand in the market.
As Japan bids farewell to a prolonged deflation, the market’s recent corporate governance reforms, tourism boom, and surging population across major cities are among the factors that bode well for real estate investors.
“Japan’s economic reawakening and the big shifts occurring in Japanese society make for attractive real estate investment opportunities. Taking advantage of these opportunities, however, is not straightforward. Property deals in Japan are often based on personal relationships and a long track record of doing business in the country,” analysts wrote in an investment insight published by private equity giant KKR.
