Earlier this week Brookfield Asset Management announced the sale of two of it’s Northwest assets; Longview Fiber and 645,000 acres of timber.
In 2007 they purchased Longview Fiber and it’s assets for $2.15 billion. Over the last 6 years they restructured the manufacturing business and separated the timber holdings culminating in 2 concurrent but unrelated sales this week to Weyerahauser (645,000 acres of Northwest timber for $2.65 billion ) and KapStone Paper and Packaging (the manufacturing business for $1.025 billion).
The deals are interesting in that they involve regional companies (Longview Fiber and Weyerhauser) and significant timber sale from a company (Brookfield) that has been very adept at profitably acquiring and selling assets of this type.
Only time will tell who made the wiser decision.