Unibail-Rodamco, a commercial property company based out of France, will be acquiring US mall re-development company Westfield Corp and its 35 shopping centers, two of which are located here in Sarasota, in a $16 billion deal. Frank Lowy, co-founder of Westfield, stated that it made sense to sell the company now because of continuing pressure applied by online retail giants like Amazon. This acquisition is not unlike many other large scale consolidations of retail shopping center companies across the globe; Unibail-Rodamco itself is a merger between France’s Unibail and Dutch-based Rodamco. Unibail-Rodamco’s plans for the future of the Sarasota Square mall Westfield Siesta Key, previously known as Southgate, remain to be seen.

To learn more about Unibail-Rodamco’s acquisition of Westfield Corp, please check out Byron Kaye’s article on Reuters.