(Bloomberg) -- Colombia’s billionaire Santo Domingo family is selling its stake in Spanish real estate firm Inmobiliaria Colonial Socimi SA, curbing its holdings in a favored asset class for wealthy global investors.
Firms linked to the Latin American nation’s richest family are offloading shares worth about €165.2 million ($172 million) through Deutsche Bank AG, according to a statement on Friday. That represents about 5% of the ordinary stock in the Madrid-listed owner of office buildings in Spain and France. The 5.23 euro-sale price from Alejandro Santo Domingo and his family to institutional investors, expected to complete on Nov. 29, represents about a 5% discount to Colonial’s closing price on Thursday.
Representatives for Colonial and Bevco, the Luxembourg-based investment firm that helps to oversee the Santo Domingo family’s stake in the real estate firm, declined to comment. A representative for Deutsche Bank didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The family made its fortune in brewing beer and has rapidly built up its wealth outside that industry over the past decade without touching its major asset: a stake in Anheuser-Busch InBev SA. Led by 47 year-old Alejandro, the Latin American dynasty has now amassed a fortune of about $14.2 billion, largely through its stake in the brewer of Budweiser beer, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The Santo Domingos first emerged as Colonial shareholders a decade ago and saw the value of their original investment more than triple before the pandemic sparked a major slump in the shares. Prior to the Covid-19 crisis, office property owners like Colonial were often a draw for ultra-rich investors seeking stable income through trophy properties offering long-term leases, but the rise of remote work has made other real estate classes more attractive.
Colonial’s share price has fallen 15.9% this year through Thursday.
Alejandro became the head of the family following his father’s death in 2011. The current composition of the family’s fortune began to take shape when they sold their stake in Colombian beer-maker Bavaria to UK brewer SAB Miller in 2005 for stock. AB InBev then acquired SAB Miller in 2016, with Alejandro becoming a key negotiator for the $103 billion deal.
The family has boosted allocations to private equity in recent years, investing in almost a dozen US funds outside public markets through Bevco, including those from KKR & Co. and Jorge Paulo Lemann’s 3G Capital. In the past three years, Bevco’s private equity allocations have increased more than six-fold, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Other billionaires still betting on commercial real estate include Zara founder Amancio Ortega, who has amassed a global property empire that has made him a landlord for companies including Rio Tinto Plc, Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. Joe Tsai, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s co-founder, also emerged in 2022 with an indirect stake in five-star hotels across Spain through his family office, Blue Pool Capital, while another Latin America dynasty was hunting for deals last year to acquire US real estate for the first time.
--With assistance from Thomas Gualtieri.
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