商業(yè)版塊
Schumpeter
熊彼特欄目
The warehouse king
倉(cāng)庫(kù)之王
Why industrial wasteland is the new battltground for property giants
工業(yè)廢棄地為何會(huì)成為房地產(chǎn)巨頭的新戰(zhàn)場(chǎng)
In the late 1990s Hamid Moghadam, an Iranian-born property developer, made a $5m bet on Webvan, an American online grocer. It was a bust. Webvan was one of the most spectacular casualties of the dotcom crash. More galling still, Mr Moghadam turned down the opportunity to invest in another e-commerce upstart called Amazon, thinking its focus on books was too narrow compared with groceries. Yet some people can win even by losing. Sensing a potential bounty in the online craze, the firm he cofounded, AMB, sold its portfolio of shopping centres and bought millions of square feet of warehouse space on the tarmac of American airports instead. "We got the company wrong, but we got the big trend right," he says. Two decades later the company he heads, Prologis, is Amazon's biggest landlord. Mr Moghadam, now 63, stands tall over the world's warehouse business.
20世紀(jì)90年代末，出生于伊朗的房地產(chǎn)開發(fā)商哈米德·穆加達(dá)姆以500萬美元的價(jià)格押注于美國(guó)的網(wǎng)上雜貨零售商Webvan。而這場(chǎng)賭注破產(chǎn)了。Webvan是泡沫崩潰中損失最慘重的公司之一。更令人惱火的是，穆加達(dá)姆拒絕了投資另外一家電子商務(wù)新貴Amazon的機(jī)會(huì)，他認(rèn)為與雜貨零售商相比，亞馬遜對(duì)圖書的關(guān)注相對(duì)狹隘。然而有些人能夠反敗為勝。他意識(shí)到了網(wǎng)絡(luò)熱潮中的潛在利益，所以他賣掉了自己創(chuàng)建的公司AMB的購(gòu)物中心組合，轉(zhuǎn)而在美國(guó)機(jī)場(chǎng)的停機(jī)坪上購(gòu)買了數(shù)百萬平方英尺的倉(cāng)庫(kù)空間。他說，“我們投資錯(cuò)了公司，但是我們準(zhǔn)確地把握住了大趨勢(shì)，”20年后，他領(lǐng)導(dǎo)的公司Prologis是亞馬遜最大的業(yè)主。穆加達(dá)姆現(xiàn)在63歲了，他屹立在全球倉(cāng)儲(chǔ)業(yè)務(wù)之上。
A Stanford graduate who got his start in property because no one else in America would hire him during the Iranian revolution,Mr Moghadam has made a career of bold bets. In 2011, with property still reeling from the financial crisis of 2007-09, he led a bumper deal to unite AMB and Prologis, a bigger rival, with a combined $46bn of owned and managed assets. Since then the propertyinvestment firm has expanded globally. It has assets of $125bn and floor space of lbn square feet (90 square kilometres, or a Manhattan-and-a-half). A surge of e-commerce during the covid-19 pandemic has helped underpin its share price; its market value of $68bn is just below an all-time high. Yet Mr Moghadam is not alone in realising that the humble shed can be as good an investment in the e-commerce era as shovels were during the Gold Rush. Blackstone, the world's largest alternative-asset manager, invested more than $25bn last year in warehouses in America and Europe. It calls logistics its "highest-conviction global investment theme". A battle over industrial wasteland is underway.
穆加達(dá)姆作為一個(gè)斯坦福的畢業(yè)生，因?yàn)樵谝晾矢锩陂g，沒有其他的美國(guó)人會(huì)雇用他，他就大膽地賭了一把并開始了自己的房地產(chǎn)生涯。在2011年，房地產(chǎn)業(yè)仍在2007-09年的金融危機(jī)的影響中掙扎，于是他主導(dǎo)了一場(chǎng)非常大的交易，他以自有資產(chǎn)和管理資產(chǎn)，共計(jì)460億美元，將AMB與更大的競(jìng)爭(zhēng)對(duì)手Prologis聯(lián)合了起來。從那時(shí)起，這家房地產(chǎn)投資公司就在全球擴(kuò)張。它的資產(chǎn)為1250億美元，建筑面積為10億平方英尺（90平方公里，相當(dāng)于1.5個(gè)曼哈頓）。由于新冠肺炎疫情期間電子商務(wù)激增，幫助支撐了其股價(jià)；其市值680億美元，略低于歷史最高水平。然而并非只有穆加達(dá)姆一人意識(shí)到，在電子商務(wù)時(shí)代，簡(jiǎn)陋的棚屋可以像淘金熱時(shí)期的鐵鍬一樣成為一項(xiàng)不錯(cuò)的投資。世界最大的另類資產(chǎn)管理機(jī)構(gòu)黑石，去年在美國(guó)和歐洲的倉(cāng)庫(kù)投資超過150億美元。它將物流業(yè)稱為“全球最具說服力的投資主題”。一場(chǎng)關(guān)于工業(yè)廢棄地的戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)正在進(jìn)行。
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