Want to invest like the Lowys? Now you can
Assembly Funds Management, the investment house backed by the billionaire Lowy family, has begun raising finance for a second property fund, reflecting growing appetite for non-bank real estate debt.
Assembly Funds Management was set up in 2019 with $75 million from Frank Lowy – who has a personal fortune of $9.33 billion, according to the Financial Review Rich List – and the Lowy Family Group in partnership with private equity firm Alceon. It attracts money from local and foreign high-net-worth family offices as well as institutional investors.
Frank Lowy’s family office is backing two property funds in Australia.
Michael Gutman, the former chief operating officer at Westfield, became chief executive of Assembly after Sir Frank sold his shopping centre empire to European giant Unibail-Rodamco for $32 billion in 2017.
The new fund is the second after itsfirst, which collected $350 million, closed last year, and the multi-year-long raise only began in earnest this month, sources close to the group said. The fund will have an initial close of between $100 million and $150 million and will target returns of between 15 per cent and 17 per cent, similar to the first, the Australian Diversified Property Fund 1.
While planning is in its initial stages, one of the fund’s focuses is likely to be real estate debt. Developers have been increasingly shut off from bank lending, a situation set to continue as the crisis facing commercial property has only been getting more acute with vacancy rates skyrocketing. Family office executives said the debt was increasingly attractive for cashed-up families looking for returns in a high interest rate environment.
The new fund is also likely to maintain Assembly’s focus on industrial and
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