{"id":8805,"date":"2017-12-13T12:42:57","date_gmt":"2017-12-13T17:42:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.garmento.net\/europes-unibail-rodamco-bids-16-billion-westfield-global-shift-4\/"},"modified":"2017-12-13T12:42:57","modified_gmt":"2017-12-13T17:42:57","slug":"europes-unibail-rodamco-bids-16-billion-westfield-global-shift-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.garmento.net\/de\/europes-unibail-rodamco-bids-16-billion-westfield-global-shift-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Europe&#8217;s Unibail-Rodamco bids $16 billion for Westfield in global shift"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 class=\"h1 fg-article__title\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Europe&#8217;s Unibail-Rodamco bids $16 billion for Westfield in global shift<\/span><\/h1>\n<div class=\"fg-article__meta\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><time class=\"fg-article__date\" datetime=\"2017-12-12T01:26:24-06:00\">December 12, 2017<\/time><\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"actions fg-article__actions\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><button class=\"picto-news-zoom-out fg-article__action\" title=\"Decrease text size\"><i class=\"fa fa-search-minus\"><\/i><\/button>\u00a0<button class=\"picto-news-zoom-in fg-article__action\" title=\"Increase text size\"><i class=\"fa fa-search-plus\"><\/i><\/button>\u00a0<button class=\"picto-print fg-article__action palm--hidden\" title=\"Print\"><i class=\"fa fa-print\"><\/i><\/button><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"content line fg-article__content\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Unibail-Rodamco, Europe\u2019s biggest property group, has agreed to buy shopping mall owner Westfield Corp\u00a0 for $16 billion, (A$21 billion) marking the biggest takeover of an Australian company and a shift in global retail property to counter online shopping.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure class=\"table\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><a class=\"fancybox\" style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"http:\/\/us.media.fashionnetwork.com\/m\/5b00\/7984\/e490\/26a4\/75ca\/b20e\/2ba5\/b249\/6e37\/ad10\/ad10.jpg\" rel=\"group\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"shadow\" src=\"http:\/\/us.media.fashionnetwork.com\/m\/5b00\/7984\/e490\/26a4\/75ca\/b20e\/2ba5\/b249\/6e37\/ad10\/650x1019.60\/ad10.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/span><figcaption><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Westfield Corp<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The deal gives Europe-focused Unibail, which owns \u2018Les 4 Temps\u2019 and \u2018Forum des Halles\u201d in Paris and has centres spreading from Helsinki to Valencia, exposure to the United States and Britain, where Westfield operates 35 malls, including landmark premises in London.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Under its Australian billionaire chairman and co-founder Frank Lowy, Westfield has pioneered U.S. mall redevelopment, introducing upscale food courts, high-end restaurants, bars, cinemas and boutique fashion outlets to entice shoppers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Talks to seal a deal had taken just six weeks, said Lowy whose family will no longer run the company he set up in 1960 but will end up with a 2.8 percent stake in the combined group.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Lowy said it made sense to sell because Unibail offered a \u201cvery good price\u201d, but acknowledged that the sale partly reflected global consolidation and the pressure on retailers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">A tough consumer spending environment and intense competition from online rivals has made retailers more selective with their expansion plans, making life tough for shopping center operators and driving consolidation in the sector.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Unibail\u2019s move dwarfs British shopping center owner Hammerson\u2019s purchase of smaller rival Intu Properties for some 3.4 billion pounds, creating a global leader with $72 billion of gross market value in 27 retail markets under the distinctive red Westfield logo.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Around 37 percent of the combined entity\u2019s portfolio would be in France and 22 percent in the United States.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201cWestfield is the best fit for us and a natural extension of our strategy,\u201d Unibail\u2019s chief executive Christopher Cuvillier said following the announcement of the proposed deal, which would be worth $24.7 billion including debt.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Unibail is focused on large sites with heavy footfall and high-profile tenants such as Apple, Zara and Primark and analysts said it would gain from importing the Westfield model.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Under the terms of the deal, Westfield shareholders would receive cash and shares totaling $7.55, or A$10.01, an 18 percent premium per share. The shares were halted earlier on Tuesday pending the announcement, having last traded at A$8.50.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201cWith a A$10 handle in front, the offer doesn\u2019t look bad,\u201d Sydney-based CLSA analyst Sholto Maconochie said, adding the deal would \u201ccreate the leading mall operator globally\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Shares in Unibail-Rodamco, which was formed in 2007 by the merger of France\u2019s Unibail and Dutch-based Rodamco, were down 4 percent at 1500 GMT, with analysts at Kepler Cheuvreux saying that the deal looked expensive.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>RETAIL REINVENTION\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Shopping center owners are scrambling to reinvent themselves to keep up with rapid changes in consumer behavior, with the expansion of e-commerce giant Amazon.com coinciding with an explosion in online purchases, while consumers increasingly treat malls as places for socializing and window shopping.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Once dominant United States department store operators such as Macy\u2019s Inc and J C Penney Co Inc have announced plans to shut hundreds of stores in recent years, putting pressure on landlords to find new \u201canchor tenants\u201d or come up with new ways to grow returns.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201cWestfield has got assets in the UK and in the U.S. that are all in mature Amazon markets. They\u2019re already 50 percent through that online retail switch,\u201d Morningstar analyst Tony Sherlock said of the deal.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The Lowy family, which owns 9 percent of Westfield, said they would rather be investors than executives after putting in a combined 145 years at the company, which has stakes in 18 suburban U.S. shopping centres, three of which it wholly owns.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs have committed to provide 6.1 billion euros in funding to cover the cash portion of the offer, Unibail said.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"fg-article__copyrights push-full--top\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u00a9 Thomson Reuters 2017 All rights reserved.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Europe&#8217;s Unibail-Rodamco bids $16 billion for Westfield in global shift December 12, 2017 \u00a0\u00a0 Unibail-Rodamco, Europe\u2019s biggest property group, has agreed to buy shopping mall owner Westfield Corp\u00a0 for $16 billion, (A$21 billion) marking the biggest takeover of an Australian company and a shift in global retail property to counter online shopping. Westfield Corp The&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":8806,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"2.10.7","language":"de","enabled_languages":["en","es","de","fr","ru"],"languages":{"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"es":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"de":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"fr":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"ru":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.garmento.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8805"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.garmento.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.garmento.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.garmento.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.garmento.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.garmento.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.garmento.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.garmento.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.garmento.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.garmento.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}