Daiwa Real Estate Asset Management Co., a unit of the nation's second-largest brokerage, will set up a health-care real estate investment trust that will own nursing homes and hospitals in the world's fastest-aging society.
Daiwa Real Estate plans to start operating the trust with about ¥10 billion as early as March and list the shares on the Tokyo Stock Exchange by mid-2014, the company said in a statement through the bourse Thursday.
The unit also manages Daiwa Office Investment Corp. and Daiwa Residential Private Investment Corp. with a total of ¥400 billion in assets under management, it said.
The REIT will be the first of its kind in Japan, according to Daiwa Real Estate, as it seeks to benefit from rising demand for elderly care in a country where 1 in 4 people will be older than 65 next year. That compares with 9.6 percent in China and 14 percent in the United States, according to data compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau.