Warburg Pincus’ JV to invest in Korean prime warehouses

US private equity firm Warburg Pincus LLC said on Tuesday it will establish a joint venture in South Korea via its Asia real estate fund to invest in logistics centers across the Asian country.

The PE house and Seoul-based real estate developer MQ Group will set up the JV, Qube Industrial, to invest seed capital in four prime warehouses. The assets are located in the Seoul metropolitan area and South Gyeongsang Province, and each has more than a 300,000 square-meter floor area, the PE firm said.

Warburg Pincus has more than $84 billion in assets under management. Since it was founded in 1966, it has invested more than $113 billion in over 1,000 companies across private equity, real estate and capital solutions strategies.

Korea’s National Pension Service (NPS), the world’s third-largest pension fund, hired the investment firm for its real estate management in 2021 and private equity in the third quarter of this year.  

Government Employees Pension Service (GEPS) of Korea tapped the New York-headquartered asset manager for a global buyout and growth equity investment in June of this year. 

MQ Group has managed about 20 projects for warehouse development, over a combined 1.4 million square meters, in Seoul and Busan. The real estate developer's Chief Executive Yigeun Kim will chair Qube Industrial, while James Lim (Lim Tae-geun), former managing director of Oaktree Capital Management, will be the CEO of the JV.

Write to Byeong-Hwa Ryu at hwahwa@hankyung.com

Jihyun Kim edited this article.