Billionaire casino tycoon Stanley Ho is to buy Green Property Ventures’ 7-8 St James’s Square, SW1 – the building that holds the record for the highest office rent paid in the UK – for around £213m – a 3.75% yield.
Ho’s Shun Tak Group is in exclusive talks to buy the asset, in a move that will bring an end to Green’s ownership of a portfolio once owned by convicted fraudster Achilleas Kallakis.
Stephen Vernon and Pat Gunne’s private firm appointed CBRE to start a formal marketing process for the asset in October after it received unsolicited interest from investors at the start of the summer.
The average rent in the Eric Parry-designed, 62,195 sq ft property is £125 per sq ft. The total income is £8m pa, including 18 months’ rent guarantee on the second and third floors, at £150 per sq ft and £120 per sq ft respectively.
It is let to five tenants, including the Helly Nahmad Gallery, which agreed a record UK office rent when it took 2,959 sq ft at £185 per sq ft last April.
Ho has been nicknamed the “King of gambling” and the “King of Macau” for the 40-year monopoly he had on the island’s gambling industry.
He also has business interests in tourism, shipping, banking and air transport.
Ho is Macau’s wealthiest individual and in 2011 Forbes named him the richest man in Hong Kong, with a net worth of $32bn (£25.2bn).
Shun Tak Group is unrepresented.
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