The global banking giant HSBC pulled off the UK's largest-ever commercial property deal yesterday, selling its London headquarters for a record £1.1bn to the Spanish property group Metrovacesa.
The bank also sealed an agreement to lease back the Docklands tower block for the next 20 years at an annual rent of £43.5m - giving the Spanish investors an initial yield of just 4 per cent on their investment.
Recent large deals in the UK commercial property sector have yielded in the region of 4.5 to 5 per cent. It is believed the company was willing to accept the lower yield due to the high profile of the property.
The company said it aims to become one of the world's leading real-estate investors.
HSBC also secured an option to extend its lease for an additional five years at the end of the 20-year term. However, Metrovacesa, which is believed to have beat some 14 other bidders to secure the deal, has a 998-year lease on the property.
The sale of the 210-metre tower block locks in an investment return of more than 100 per cent for HSBC, which spent some £500m building the skyscraper at the turn of the millennium. The company moved into the building in 2002, and now has some 8,000 staff working in the block.
Metrovacesa's purchase shatters the recent record for UK commercial property deals, which was set only last month when Beacon Capital Partners, the US real estate investment group, snapped up Citypoint for £650m at a yield of 4.85 per cent.
Citypoint is one of the largest office blocks in the City of London, housing a number of offices, as well as a gym, shops, bars and restaurants.
The HSBC sale is the latest in a string of large commercial property deals in London over the past year. The investment banking group Evans Randall bought Sir Norman Foster's "Gherkin" - home to Swiss Re's UK headquarters - for £630m in February. More >>
No comments:
Post a Comment