Prologis ramps up pressure on FTSE 100 property giant Segro
US real estate giant Prologis has called on shareholders in FTSE 100 rival Segro to engage with its £12.6bn takeover bid, arguing the deal offers a “substantial upfront premium” and access to a larger global footprint of data centres.
Prologis, a real estate investment trust (REIT) based in San Francisco, claimed that “constructive engagement… remains the best path for the board of Segro,” which has sought to fight off the takeover interest in recent weeks.
But the UK-based property firm has rejected its US suitor’s latest approach, claiming that the existing proposal “does not reflect any basis for further engagement”.
Segro has piled investment into data centres in recent years and claims its estate is far more valuable than that of Prologis.
The FTSE 100 firm issued a strongly-worded rebuttal of the takeover bid on Wednesday, describing the 925p per share offer as “opportunistic, one-sided and inadequate”.
Firms wrestle over data centre portfolio
In a presentation to Segro shareholders, Prologis claimed that it is offering the chance to “benefit from a more experienced, larger and better-capitalised data centre platform”.
The US firm said its proposal to combine the two firms into a mammoth investment trust would give Segro shareholders a “substantial upfront premium”.
The deal would also support economic growth in the UK through “continued investment in strategic logistics infrastructure, strengthening supply chain resilience and creating long-term economic opportunity,” it claimed.
Analysts at investment firm Stifel said it expected the two parties could agree on a 1,110p per share offer. But they warned that Segro’s management is “well able to realise the value inherent in its portfolio”.
A sale would “have significantly negative implications for the very survival” of the UK-listed real estate investment sector, Stifel said.
Setting out its opposition to the takeover bid to investors on Wednesday, Segro unveiled a joint venture with a London-based data centre firm to develop a new data centre in Paris.
Prologis ‘won’t back down’
Prologis has hit out at Segro’s “reliance” on joint ventures, which it said forces the firm to “give away significant value and upside to… partners while, unlike Prologis, not earning any fees or promotes that would amplify returns”.
A person close to the matter said that they expect Prologis to pursue Segro “quite aggressively”.
“In their heart [Prologis] are American entrepreneurs. Once they’ve seen something and they want it, that’s it really. I see no way that this doesn’t get incredibly messy at some point,” they added.
The two parties are at odds over the premium offered by Prologis’ 925p per share bid. This offered a nearly 25 per cent premium on Segro’s closing share price at the time of the offer.
Segro cut its net asset value to 905p per share on Wednesday, down from 925p, but claimed that its multi-billion pound investment pipeline will add at least 200p per share of value.
The property firm took £53m in new headline rent in the first half of 2026, compared to £31m last year, in what it described as a “very encouraging start to the year”.
Responding to Prologis’ latest intervention on Thursday, Segro chairman Andy Harrison said: “The Board takes its fiduciary duties very seriously, but the value of Prologis’s current, rejected proposal does not reflect any basis for further engagement.”
Shares in Segro inched up by 0.2 per cent to 867p on Thursday, leaving the stock up 21 per cent in the year to date.