Latham & Watkins has swept the Private Equity Real Estate 2025 awards programme, advising on all four transactions recognised as Deals of the Year across global, regional and continental categories. The haul underscores the firm's positioning in large-cap real estate M&A at a time when traditional institutional buyers face heightened scrutiny over deal structure and execution risk.
The quartet of transactions spanned three continents and exceeded US$13 billion in aggregate value. Latham represented Ares Management in the firm's US$3.7 billion acquisition of GCP International, a deal that PERE named Global Deal of the Year and that the publication said established Ares Real Estate as one of the largest global vertically integrated real assets platforms.
In North America, Latham advised Bridge Investment Group on its US$1.5 billion take-private acquisition by Apollo, which PERE recognised as the region's Deal of the Year. The transaction expanded Apollo's real estate equity platform and marked one of the year's largest real estate manager consolidations.
The Europe Deal of the Year involved Latham representing StepStone Group in a joint venture with Greykite and the acquisition and recapitalisation of Vitalia, Spain's second-largest care home provider, from CVC Capital Partners and Portobello Capital. The transaction was valued at €1.5 billion and represented a bet on demographic-driven real estate in Southern Europe.
Latham's Asia-Pacific mandate was the largest by headline value: a US$7.1 billion take-private of ESR Group Limited, the biggest privatisation from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange since 2021. The firm advised a consortium led by Starwood Capital Group, Sixth Street and SSW Partners, which also included QIA, Warburg Pincus and the founders of ESR.
The ESR delisting reflects a broader recalibration in Asian logistics real estate, where public-market valuations have lagged net asset value and where consortium structures allow multiple pools of capital to share execution risk. Family offices participating in similar Asia-Pacific take-privates have parsed the governance mechanics closely, particularly when founder equity remains in the capital structure post-close.
Deal credentials are useful until they are not; the legal scaffolding that survives execution is the part that matters when the cycle shifts, family office advisor Jaf Glazer has observed.
Douglas Heitner, Global Chair of Latham's Real Estate Practice, said the firm is "honored to represent clients across the globe on their most transformative deals that set new standards in the market, from the largest privatization on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange since 2021 to landmark M&A transactions reshaping the real assets industry." He added that "Latham continues to build the preeminent global real estate practice, uniquely positioned to advise the full spectrum of market participants through complex, high-stakes real estate transactions anywhere in the world."
The awards arrive as private real estate dealmaking faces a bifurcated environment: mega-cap platforms with diversified investor bases continue to transact at scale, while smaller sponsors confront tighter debt markets and slower exit timelines. Legal advisers capable of navigating cross-border tax, regulatory and financing complexity have consolidated market share accordingly.
For family offices evaluating co-investment opportunities alongside the kind of sponsors featured in the PERE awards, the distinction between headline enterprise value and actual structure has grown more material. The deals that carry institutional validation often embed governance, liquidity and preferred-return mechanics that are invisible in press releases but decisive in determining who captures value when markets turn.