Among the highlights of 2014 was the blockbuster $25 billion initial public offering for Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (Nasdaq: BABA), which may rank as the biggest deal ever for some time to come. Hiding in Alibaba’s shadow is another historic IPO that occurred exactly two months later. The $2.6 billion offering for Paramount Group, Inc. (NYSE: PGRE) is the biggest deal in the history of real estate investment trusts, or REITs. Prior to Paramount’s debut, Douglas Emmett, Inc. (NYSE: DEI) set the record in 2006 by raising $1.6 billion. Read More
Among the highlights of 2014 was the blockbuster $25 billion initial public offering for Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (Nasdaq: BABA), which may rank as the biggest deal ever for some time to come. Hiding in Alibaba’s shadow is another historic IPO that occurred exactly two months later. The $2.6 billion offering for Paramount Group, Inc. (NYSE: PGRE) is the biggest deal in the history of real estate investment trusts, or REITs. Prior to Paramount’s debut, Douglas Emmett, Inc. (NYSE: DEI) set the record in 2006 by raising $1.6 billion. While Paramount Group — and other REITs — won’t deliver the meteoric growth rates of tech stocks like Alibaba, they do represent a chance to own hard, stable assets that fare well in a range of economic climates. Paramount’s IPO has performed moderately well since it went public, but investors are coming to term with the fact that it offers a tepid 2.1% dividend yield. That figure lags the 3.1% yield for the MSCI U.S. REIT index, a broad indicator of the domestic real… Read More