Blackstone, the world’s largest private equity firm, invests in nearly everything in the global economy: biomedical research, digital payments, autonomous robots, power plants, motel chains, dating apps, and a slew of amusement parks including SeaWorld and Legoland.
In 2019, Blackstone real estate head Ken Caplan said warehouses were the firm’s “highest conviction global investment theme” after Blackstone spent $18.7 billion to buy up 179 million square feet of warehouse space. (Blackstone claims it was the largest real estate transaction of all time.) Since then, the company has been on a spending spree. By the end of 2020, Blackstone had gobbled up 1.2 billion square feet of “logistics real estate” globally, making it the largest warehouse landlord on earth.
Blackstone is betting on the future of e-commerce. As more of our spending moves online, more goods will have to be collected, packaged, labeled, shipped from, and returned to warehouses. The e-commerce vendor with the most efficient network of warehouses will be best positioned to slash delivery times from days to hours, giving it a competitive advantage over its rivals. Blackstone wants to be their landlord. By renting out those warehouses to the highest bidder, it stands to cash in as more of the economy moves online: The world will spend $4.2 trillion on e-commerce this year, and the sector is expected to top $10 trillion by 2025.
Read more/Source: Quartz
