Hazelview Investments has completed a strategic transaction with Presima to bring their respective global real estate investment trust (REIT) teams together.

Hazelview is a global real estate investment firm with private and public real estate solutions that had more than $10 billion in assets under management at the end of 2025. The company’s public real estate arm had $1.7 billion in assets under management (AUM).

Presima is a specialist boutique asset manager focused on global real estate securities that was acquired by Slate Asset Management in 2022.

Hazelview has now assumed Presima’s investment management contracts.

“There's a fee that's paid for the transaction to bring those clients over,” Hazelview co-chief executive officer and chief investment officer of public real estate Corrado Russo told RENX.

“It's roughly $500 million of AUM that's coming over to Hazelview, which will strengthen our business. It’s a pretty straight-forward purchase price paid for the investment accounts that came over to Hazelview.”

Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

Basis for the deal

“The idea was that if we could combine these two Canadian entities into one to create a larger and more efficient entity that had greater scale, real operational efficiencies, new strategies and a stronger and deeper investment team, we would be much more competitive in terms of taking market share,” Russo said.

The two firms are complementary in that Presima is very strong in Asia, Hazelview is very strong in North America, and they both have expertise in Europe, he added.

Conversations with Slate about a strategic relationship between Hazelview and Presima began late last year and were followed by more conversations with all of Presima’s clients about how they could benefit by the two companies joining forces.

Approval was also needed from securities regulators in Ontario and Quebec before the deal could close.

After all of this planning and due diligence from both sides, clients should expect a seamless transition of portfolio management, reporting, compliance and administration.

“There was a real alignment in terms of how we approach markets, how we approach companies, how we underwrite and how we think about opportunities and risk, so there's a real alignment of philosophy which made this really easy in terms of process,” Russo said.

“As we've worked through this process, the investment teams on both sides have been in constant contact with each other, learning from each other, thinking about the markets, thinking about their solutions, our solutions, and how we can combine this and make it the most efficient.”

Benefits of the transaction

Hazelview believes the transaction strengthens the firm’s ability to deliver:

• deeper research and analytical capabilities;
• expanded global REIT coverage;
• greater scale to support future growth;
• a broader range of investment solutions; and
• a stronger value proposition for investors.

“We think this gives us a real foothold in competing with some of the bigger guys out of the U.S.,” Russo said.

There were five Presima team members listed on its website before the deal closed.

Russo said a Presima senior portfolio manager for Asia and a European analyst will join Hazelview’s global REIT team and remain in their current Montreal office — at least for now. 

Hazelview has offices in Toronto, New York, Hamburg and Hong Kong and its new combined global REIT team will be comprised of 15 people.