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Norges Bank Investment Management and Great Portland Estates have completed two separate deals which will see them invest a combined £140M in the West End office and retail market.
Norges, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, bought a further 10% interest in the Pollen Estate, which owns about 750K SF of offices and retail in the eastern part of Mayfair. It includes most of Savile Row, the street famous for its host of bespoke men’s tailors.
Norges paid £81M for the 10% stake, taking its ownership of the 38 retail and office units to 68%. In 2014, it paid £343M for a 58% stake in the estate, which can trace its development and ownership back to 1622. The price paid this year implies that the value of the estate has gone up by around a third in the past decade and now stands at £794M.
About a mile to the north east, REIT Great Portland Estates paid £58.5M for Whittington House, a 74.5K SF building near Tottenham Court Road station. The company will refurbish the building to a standard that allows it to become a company’s headquarters, it said. Completion is due in the first quarter of 2027.
The building is currently let on a short-term basis at an annual rent of about £5M a year, with vacant possession expected in Q1 2025, GPE said. The price being paid is about £785 per SF.
GPE’s strategy is to buy and refurbish buildings that can either become HQs on a long lease or properties it will manage under its own flexible office offer.
“Whittington House is our first HQ acquisition following our rights issue in May and meets all of our acquisition criteria,” GPE Senior Investment Manager Alexa Baden-Powell said in a statement. “At a significant discount to replacement cost, the building has angles to exploit and our refurbishment will deliver high quality, sustainable space into a market that is increasingly starved of such supply.”
Along with its purchase of 19/23 Wells Street, GPE has invested £77.5M into new West End acquisitions in the last month, she said. That figure comes to £110M, “including the [capital expenditure] we intend to invest in both buildings.”
GPE also announced that it has signed a new £150M environmental, social and corporate governance-linked unsecured revolving credit facility at a margin of 90 basis points over SONIA. The facility has an initial three-year term which may be extended to a maximum of five years at GPE’s request, subject to bank consent, the company said.
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