The end of brick and mortar retail bonanza.
Westfield, the Australian firm that operates 33 malls across the United States, is being bought by Unibail-Rodamco, a European property investment firm based in France. The real sales price may be $24.7 billion. That higher amount was reported by another web site. The Westfield web site claims the value of its properties at $32 million. Whatever the sales price is we can most definitely say it is in the billions of dollars.
The combined company will have 104 shopping centres around the world. Westfield’s two (soon to be three) London sites were mentioned as particularly attractive for the new owners.
In the Los Angeles metropolitan area the list includes malls in
Century City
Culver City
Sherman Oaks (Fashion Square)
Santa Anita
Canoga Park (Topanga and Village)
Valencia
Palm Desert
The issue for all malls is the growth of internet marketing. Amazon, Apple, and Walmart are the three really big participants. They are referred to as E-commerce companies.
Amazon boasted of being the biggest employer of all the internet companies with a workforce of 268,908 people in 2015 and generated revenues of $70 billion. The growth has been spectacular as it is reported that Amazon’s latest reported revenue is now over $94 billion.
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