14 top stories
1 The Pinnacle: inside the £770m deal to save a skyscraper
2 Savills poaches Apple property chief
3 Man City backers plan 7,000 Eastlands homes
4 Legal & General gets offer it can’t refuse in W1
5 Top Agents 2014 survey
6 Gherkin tower in receivership
7 Estates Gazette Power List 2014
8 P-Diddy style penthouses launched
9 £300m Bond Street brand grab
10 Young, professional and priced out
11 Agent sues Ashkenazy over Spitalfields commission
12 Senior director leaves BNP
13 JLL West End director heads to Bluebrook
14 Desmond Junior launches £250m firm
14 deals of the year
1 Cerberus buys Nama’s Project Eagle for £4.5bn
2 British Land’s Clarges Mayfair resi scheme – Bought for £129.6m in 2012, BL announced this summer it had already pre-sold £210m of flats at the scheme at an average price of £4,750 per sq ft
3 M&G buys Spinningfields in Manchester for £320m
4 Amazon lets 430,000 sq ft at Principal Place, making it the largest City fringe letting by some distance. To cap it off for landlord Brookfield, Amazon also took a short-term deal on the whole of its 108,000 sq ft Leadenhall Court, EC3
5 Bilfinger’s £150m takeover of GVA
6 TPG’s £675m takeover of DTZ
7 The Gherkin sale – A mooted asking price of £650m, it eventually sold for around £725m. This has to be a deal of the year for its sheer bombast.
8 Bluewater – if the Gherkin sale set London’s office market alight, then Land Securities’ £650m Bluewater purchase put rocket fuel in the retail property engine
9 FCA Stratford – this 430,000 sq ft prelet gives Lend Lease and London & Continental Railways the foundation they needed to start building London’s next office district
10 BBC Cardiff – its 150,000 sq ft letting in Rightacres ensures the Welsh capital’s office market has a bright future
11 Caddick Developments’ November purchase of the long stalled City One project in Leeds
12 Colliers International’s rumoured £25m purchase takeover of H2SO
13 The Estée Lauder Companies signed one of the biggest deals in W1 history, taking all 144,000 sq ft of office space at 1 Fitzroy Place, W1
14 Israeli billionaire Teddy Sagi spends more than £500m to bring all of Camden’s markets into single ownership for the first time
14 global markets you really should have been
investing in this year
1 Mumbai
2 Houston
3 Madrid
4 San Francisco
5 New York
6 Shanghai
7 Tokyo
8 Bahrain
9 Nairobi
10 Singapore
11 Sydney
12 Abu Dhabi
13 Chicago
14 Nigeria
14 losses
1 Smithfield planning enquiry: TIAA Henderson Real Estate and AimCo lost a planning inquiry over their plans to redevelop Smithfield Market.
2 Rosemarie McQueen: The strategic director for the built environment at Westminster city council stepped down after 38 years of service
3 CBRE auctions: Three years and £262m of sales after launching, CBRE brought the gavel down on its auctions
arm.
4 Phones 4U: Six years after founder John Cauldwell sold the company for £1.2bn, the last of the networks cancelled their contracts with the high street stalwart, shuttering hundreds of
shops
5 SWIP swallowed: Scottish Widows Investment Partnership was swallowed up by Aberdeen Asset Management in a £660m deal completing in April
6 SFO loses to Tchenguiz: The Serious Fraud Office lost face after it reached settlements with the Tchenguiz brothers over its investigation into their business affairs
7 JLL’s King Sturge stalwarts: A string of big names walked post-2011 merger this year – from City guru James Beckham to corporate occupier stalwart Jeremy Day
8 Songbird takeover: QIA and Brookfield lost the battle to take over Canary Wharf parent company Songbird
9 Roger Lister: Land Securities’ leasing director passed away in September at 59
10 Paul Katz: The renowned Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates architect passed away, aged 57, in November
11 The Pinnacle: The consortium behind the Pinnacle lost their patience, tasking CBRE with selling the project. Axa remained in exclusive negotiations to buy the scheme
12 Peter Rees: The City of London lost its long-serving planning officer, and his colourful personality
13 Liz Peace: The first lady of property stepped down as BPF chief executive
14 Cheesegrater bolts/Walkie Talkie’s scorch: British Land and Oxford Properties’ Cheesegrater Tower lost a pair of large bolts in November.
And Land Securities’ and Canary Wharf Group’s Walkie Talkie lost its glare thanks to the addition of a shading system
14 regional stories
1 Man City kicks off regen project with funding by the Abu Dhabi Group
2 HS2 signs 100,000 sq ft office letting at Two Snowhill, Birmingham
3 Apple eyes Cambridge for R&D hub
4 Allied London wins Manchester ITV site
5 Pharma giant Parexel agrees record Notts let
6 Rockstar play for 70,000 sq ft Scotsman HQ
7 Moorfield swoops for Quartermile
8 Abstract nets Aker group for 335,000 sq ft Aberdeen HQ
9 Devolution fires regional demand
10 Omega wins 2.1m sq ft Warrington consent
11 Cambridge population to grow by 25% in 15 years
12 IM Properties first to begin large spec shed development
13 Irish capital values rise by 20% in 12 months
14 Deutsche Bank moves to 250,000 sq ft Brum offices
emily.wright@estatesgazette.com
Review of the year 2014:
