Abacus Property Group is a

ASX 200 The S&P/ASX 200 index is a market-capitalization weighted and float-adjusted stock market index of stocks listed on the Australian Securities Exchange. The index is maintained by Standard & Poor's and is considered the benchmark for Austr ...

public listed company that specialises in investing in Australian

Real estate investment trust A real estate investment trust (REIT) is a company that owns, and in most cases operates, income-producing real estate. REITs own many types of commercial real estate, including office and apartment buildings, warehouses, hospitals, shopping cente ...

s with an investment portfolio concentrated in the Office and Self Storage sectors. They manage legacy investments in property developments.

History

Abacus was established in 1996 by an academic from the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks among the top thre ...

, Dr Frank Wolf, listing on the Australian Securities Exchange in November 2002.

Operations

It has a single corporate office in Sydney, Australia. The current chair is the South-African born, Myra Salkinder. The CEO Steven Sewell was appointed in 2018 after leaving

Vicinity Centres Vicinity Centres , previously known as Federation Centres and Centro Properties Group, is an Australian Real Estate Investment Trust specialising in ownership and management of Australian shopping centres. As at December 2021, it had stakes i ...

. The group's investment portfolio is divided into four divisions: office spaces, self-storage facilities, retail shopping centres and industrial properties. It also owns some historically notable buildings, such as the late art-deco Minerva Theatre near Kings Cross in Sydney. The group's asset portfolio is heavily weighted to office towers, such as 201 Elizabeth Street in Sydney, the Brisbane Club and

Westpac Westpac Banking Corporation, known simply as Westpac, is an Australian multinational banking and financial services company headquartered at Westpac Place in Sydney, New South Wales. Established in 1817 as the Bank of New South Wales, ...

House in Adelaide. Its first major investment success was purchasing the heritage listed CBC building at 343 George Street, Sydney for $55 million and sold it the next year for $78 million. As of 2021, the group is considered to be highly exposed to downturn in office spaces since the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

led to fewer office workers working from their office. While the group primarily invests in commercial property assets, such as office towers most of its recent growth has been in self-storage units, a sector buoyed by the storage needs of Australia's growing e-commerce industry. In 2020, Abacus acquired Storage King Pty Ltd, buying the remaining $50m of shares. In early 2021 it purchased a further four self storage facilities in Adelaide and Sydney, along with the remaining 60% of the Oasis Centre in Queensland. In 2019, the group began divesting from the residential property sector.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Abacus Property Group Companies based in Sydney Companies listed on the Australian Securities Exchange Australian brands