Jeffery Perlman from his iconic Warburg Pincus office in Marina Bay Sands Singapore charts ESR’s strategic direction. ERS’s takeover of Singapore’s real estate giant ARA Asset Management, leads the company to be the world’s biggest property managers, said Forbes.
It all started when John Lim sold his ARA with $95 billion in AUM for $5.2 billion ESR. Then, ESR successfully quadrupled its assets from $36.4 billion at that time. Combining ARA with ESR helps Lim and his key investor Chew Gek Khim into roughly 5% share each in a larger publicly traded firm. It was the best decision making.
Chew Gek Khim, Singaporean billionaire said that merging two companies could create Asia’s Blackstone. Behind Balckstone and Brookfield, ESR is now the world’s third largest publicly held property manager. Under Perlman’s leadership, ESR built a stronger base of physical infrastructure supporting Asia’s Booming e-commerce and digital industries.
ESR meets demands from high tech platforms such as Amazon, Alibaba, Coupang and JD.com. So, while many of Asia’s real estate big businesses suffered from pandemic, ESR share price has risen 53% in less than three years.
Perlman has this strategy that he focuses on developing new economy business while other real estate businesses are building skyscrapers, hotels, and iconic buildings. As a leader he is the instrumental type. Perlman was cofounding Shanghai-based e-Shang at that time. Then the company merged with Redwood Group in 2016 to create ESR. ESR’s current market is now $15 billion. Perlman said he has a vision to start delivering logistic facilities then building capable fund management.
Perlman foresees ESR having the scale and expertise to benefit from various trends in Asia Pacific property markets. New economy and digital transformation businesses are those that ESR would win in the next outreach.
