Perron Group is selling its stake in Westfield Airport West.
Perron Group, controlled by the family of late West Australian billionaire Stan Perron, is betting on the return of investors to Victoria’s shopping centre market as it sells a stake in a Westfield mall in Melbourne’s western suburbs.
Investor sentiment is shifting from an “anywhere but Melbourne” mood to a situation where counter-cyclical buyers are willing to bet conditions will improve after the impending state election and a potential change of government.
Perron Group, which funds philanthropic endeavours, is capitalising on the swing by selling a 50 per cent stake in Westfield Airport West to local funds manager JY Group as the tide turns for Victorian centres.
The move will see the WA group sell the mall stake at book value, in a sign of the strength of retail property. Other buyers in Melbourne retail have included property funds manager Charter Hall and the private Coombes Property Group.
The off-market deal is being brokered by CBRE’s Simon Rooney, who declined to comment.
Westfield Airport West is run by Scentre Group, which runs the local Westfield mall empire and owns the remaining 50 per cent of the centre.
Scentre’s accounts show the mall was valued at $365m on a capitalisation rate of 6.75 per cent last year, with the stake to sell for about $190m.
The Airport West centre is near Tullamarine Airport and houses Coles, Woolworths and Aldi, discount department stores, and more than 149 specialty stores.
Private equity firm JY Group has been one of the largest buyers of malls since the Covid-19 pandemic and has built an empire approaching $5bn.
The parties declined to comment but JY has close ties with Scentre as it co-owns Westfield Marion in Adelaide and Westfield Whitford City in Perth.
A famed WA Australian billionaire, Mr Perron, who died in 2018 at the age of 96 built the Perron Group to have net assets of more than $4bn.
The group is now run for philanthropic funding purposes, with a permanent endowment model tied to the Stan Perron Charitable Foundation.
Perron Group in 2024 sold stakes in two of its largest Perth shopping centres – Cockburn Gateway and Belmont Forum – to the listed GPT in one of its largest property exits. It struck up a new retail partnership under which GPT acquired a 50 per cent interest in the two premium Perth retail assets from Perron for about $482m.
Large-scale shopping centres are back in vogue for large investors partly as they are expected to hold up even amid rising interest rates and the impact of falling home prices. Retail property transaction volumes hit a record $13.7bn in 2025, with $2.4bn transacted in the first quarter of 2026, Citi said.