Brookfield set to buy Hiranandani’s Powai office complex for Rs 6,700 cr

MUMBAI: An iconic Mumbai realty landmark is set to change hands with a proposed deal between the Hiranandani Group and Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management, where the Mumbai-based real estate developer will sell 4.5 million square feet of prime commercial real estate in the upscale Powai area for an estimated $1 billion (Rs6,700 crore).

The deal is part of a transaction that brothers Niranjan and Surendra Hiranandani have been drawing up, to monetise office and retail space, in the wake of growing appetite for India’s commercial realty assets among global investors.

The Powai assets are housed in a partnership firm between Niranjan and Surendra, and will soon be restructured into a corporate entity. According to sources close to the group, the restructuring will involve either listing the assets via a real estate investment trust (REIT), or selling the stake to an interested partner.

Discussions have been going on with several global asset managers, but the New York-listed Brookfield, with over $240 billion in assets under management, is likely to close the deal.

“We are currently only corporatising our assets (from partnership firms) to prepare for a REIT. While there may be interest shown by more than three or four international investors, we do not have any visibility to their internal processes,” a Hiranandani Group spokesperson said.

An email sent to Brookfield remained unanswered.

The Hiranandani business park in Powai is one of the hottest suburban business districts in Mumbai, and houses offices of the top Indian and foreign companies.

In India, Brookfield has a real estate fund in joint venture with Peninsula Land. It had also acquired a subsidiary of Unitech Corporate Parks in 2014.

According to reports, Niranjan Hiranandani’s daughter Priya Vandrevala recently moved the Delhi high court against her father and her brother Darshan to restrain them from diluting their stake in the partnership firm.