Billionaire Akira Mori plans to buy as much as ¥100 billion in properties in Tokyo, New York and London, his company's first investment of this scale since 2008, as local real estate values recover and the yen strengthens.
The owner of Mori Trust Co., the nation's most profitable closely held developer, wants to buy assets such as office towers and may focus on developing so-called smart buildings that are energy efficient and have disaster-prevention systems.
Mori is taking advantage of the yen's strength to explore overseas opportunities for the first time as part of the company's most significant investment since the 76-year-old declared the end of Japan's real estate boom in 2008. Mori Trust, which has refrained from purchasing to focus on strengthening its finances, has boosted its capital ratio to 26.3 percent as of March from 17.5 percent in March 2008, the year when global financing evaporated as Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed.