India′s first Real Estate Investment Trust set for debut

India's much-awaited maiden real estate investment trust (REIT) is set to debut almost four years after the rules were notified and efforts by the government over the past few years to put in place regulations on par with global standards. Embassy Office Parks, a joint venture of US private equity firm Blackstone Group and Bengaluru-headquartered Embassy Group, is to file documents with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), proposing to raise over Rs 5,000 crores ($695 million) through this route. Apart from being India's first, the Blackstone-Embassy REIT will be Asia's largest in terms of office portfolio area, more than twice the size of others in the continent. With this, India will join the league of global REIT markets such as the US, the UK, Singapore, Japan Australia and Canada. Embassy Office Parks will list 33 million sq ft of office real estate portfolio under the REIT. Of this, an area of 24 million sq ft has been completed and has 95 per cent occupancy. The remainder is under construction. The company earns annual lease rentals of over Rs 2,000 crores ($278 million) from tenants including Google, JP Morgan, Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Wells Fargo and Mercedes Benz. It counts more than 150 tenants, over half of which are Fortune 500 companies.