Kara Wetzel – Bloomberg, 8/15/2012
General Growth Properties Inc. (GGP), the second-largest U.S. mall owner, agreed to buy Pershing Square Capital Management LP’s 14 percent stake in Brazil’s Aliansce Shopping Centers SA (ALSC3) for about $195 million.
The purchase will increase General Growth’s interest in Aliansce to 46 percent, the Chicago-based company said in a statement today. It plans to fund the deal with available cash.
Aliansce, based in Rio de Janeiro, owns interests in 18 malls, three of which are under development, totaling about 6.5 million square feet (604,000 square meters) of leasable space. Sandeep Mathrani, General Growth’s chief executive officer and a member of Aliansce’s board, said on a conference call earlier this month that his company was “committed” to increasing its assets in Brazil, Latin America’s biggest economy.
