Blackstone Said Selling $558 Million of Properties to Anbang

Blackstone Group LP is selling more than 500 million euros ($558 million) of office properties in the Netherlands to a unit of Anbang Insurance Group Co., according to a person with knowledge of the deal.

The Chinese owner of New York’s Waldorf Astoria hotel will acquire the properties through its Vivat NV unit, the person said, asking not to be named as the details are private. Blackstone and Vivat declined to comment.

Anbang, with assets of more than 800 billion yuan ($120 billion), has been on a two-year shopping spree for investments outside China, buying hotels and office buildings in New York and Canada. The insurer has been an acquirer from Blackstone before, completing most of its $6.5 billion acquisition of Strategic Hotels & Resorts Inc. from the world’s biggest private equity firm last month.

Last year, Anbang moved four of its overseas acquisitions into its Anbang Life Insurance Co. unit, including Vivat, South Korea’s Tongyang Life Insurance Co. and Belgian lender Banque Nagelmackers SA, before a possible IPO of its life insurance assets.

The Netherlands’ growing economy is boosting tenant demand for office space, which in turn is lifting property values and motivating owners to sell. The best office buildings in the Dutch capital are yielding about 5 percent compared with 4.35 percent in New York and 2.8 percent in Hong Kong, broker Cushman & Wakefield Inc. said in a report on Tuesday.

Peter Grauer, chairman of Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, is a non-executive director at Blackstone.