The Empire State Building is now nearly 10% owned by the Middle East nation of Qatar. Empire State Realty Trust, the publicly traded REIT that owns the skyscraper, announced the Qatar Investment Authority has purchased a 9.9% stake in the company by buying 29.6 million newly issued Class-A shares (19.4%) for $622M.
ESRT owns 10.1M SF of commercial space (9.4M SF of office, 720k SF of retail) in Manhattan and around the New York Tri-State area. Just over 2.8M SF of that portfolio is the Empire State Building, which counts tech tenants like LinkedIn and Shutterstock among its tenant base. It just recently underwent a $550M renovation to bring its offices to Class-A quality.
"As we continue our internal growth strategy execution, added strength and flexibility in our balance sheet expand our capacity to take advantage of opportunities through external growth," ESRT COO John Kessler said in a release.
The Qatar Investment Authority has rapidly become one of commercial real estate's most significant players, with major stakes in projects like CityCenter DC; it announced in 2015 it planned to spend $35B on US CRE by 2020.
CBRE's Darcy Stacom, Goldman Sachs and Eastdil Secured all helped broker the capital deal between ESRT and QIA.
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