China Resources Land and NorthStar Realty Europe have completed the purchase of 20 Gresham Street, EC2, for £300m – a yield of just over 4%.
As revealed by EG, the 242,800 sq ft building was bought from Axa Investment Managers and is CRL’s first acquisition in Europe. NorthStar provided £26m of preferred equity.
It is currently let to tenants including ICBC, TSB and TLT with rents across the building around £53 per sq ft of £12.8m per annum.
According to Savills research Chinese investors have accounted for eight central London investment deals totalling £717m or 17.9% of the market.
Hogan Lovells acted for the buyers. Cushman & Wakefield acted for AXA.
Next door at 30 Gresham Street Samsung Life Insurance has decided against a sale of the 400,000 sq ft building having appointed CBRE and Knight Frank to assess options including a £450m sale. Samsung is in the process of regearing leases within the building with tenant Investec.
What is China Resources Land?
Founded in 1996, CR Land is a major property investment and development company in China. It is 61.3% owned by China Resources (Holdings) Company, a conglomerate ultimately owned by China’s state council.
At 31 December 2016, the Hong Kong-listed company had projects in 56 cities across China and a landbank with a gross floor area of 482.8m sq ft.
The developer has eight residential product lines and has also built out large mixed-use schemes such as the 5.7m sq ft Shanghai MixC in the Minhang district, a suburb of Shanghai. The scheme includes a hotel, shopping centre, 11 office buildings, a museum and a sky garden.
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