(Bloomberg) -- Global Logistic Properties Ltd. has shortlisted at least three groups in the bidding for the Singapore-based warehouse operator, people with knowledge of the matter said.
GLP invited a management-backed consortium that includes Chinese investment firms Hillhouse Capital Management and Hopu Investment Management to study detailed information on the business, the people said, asking not to be identified as the information is private. The industrial property developer, which has a market value of $8.8 billion, also granted due diligence to Blackstone Group and a separate Warburg Pincus-led investor group, the people said.
Warburg Pincus is bidding together with its portfolio company E-Shang Redwood, known as ESR, according the people. GLP said in a Singapore exchange filing Monday that a special committee of independent directors was in discussions with “several parties” that will be invited to conduct due diligence.
Purchasing GLP would allow an acquirer to take advantage of a boom in demand for warehouse space from e-commerce companies such as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and JD.com Inc. GLP said in December that it hired JPMorgan Chase & Co. to advise on a strategic review requested by its largest shareholder, sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte.
Shares of GLP fell 4 percent to S$2.63 at 1:14 p.m. Tuesday in Singapore. Representatives for Blackstone, GLP, Hillhouse and Warburg Pincus declined to comment, while officials at Hopu didn't immediately answer phone calls seeking comment.
A person who answered the phone at ESR's Singapore office said nobody was immediately available to comment. A representative for the company didn't immediately reply to e-mailed questions.
ESR was formed through last year's merger of E-Shang Cayman Ltd., started in 2011 by Warburg Pincus and two Chinese entrepreneurs, and Redwood Group Asia Pte. The company has more than 7.3 million square meters (79 million square feet) of logistics property projects owned and under development in China, Japan, Singapore and South Korea, according to a press release this month.
--With assistance from Vinicy Chan Jonathan Browning and Bei Hu
To contact the reporters on this story: Joyce Koh in Singapore at jkoh38@bloomberg.net, Cathy Chan in Hong Kong at kchan14@bloomberg.net, Pooja Thakur in Singapore at pthakur@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Scent at bscent@bloomberg.net, Sree Vidya Bhaktavatsalam at sbhaktavatsa@bloomberg.net, Marcus Wright at mwright115@bloomberg.net.
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