The Glasgow head office of online travel agent and flight search website Skyscanner has been sold to a new Scottish owner in a deal reportedly worth £27m.
Hermes Real Estate spent almost £10m in 2011 remodelling the 1980s-built office block in St Vincent Street. It has now sold on the 73,000 sq ft Glasgow development to the FTSE-100 listed Aberdeen Asset Management (AAM).
Skyscanner originally took a 10 year lease on 10,860 sq ft in September, 2013. Less than six months later it signed a deal for a further 11,690 sq ft when it relocated its entire operation and 75 staff to the building in the heart of Glasgow’s Central Business District. At the time Alistair Reid, of Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL), said: “Skyscanner’s expansion has been rapid and their move to St Vincent Street is an extremely smart one.”
The remaining 51,000 sq ft of Grade A space in the distinctive glass fronted building was let last summer to Network Rail.
“The sale of 151-155 St Vincent Street is testament to the added value produced by our strategic asset management approach,” commented Hermes chief executive, Chris Taylor.
“Although we are long term investors, we are confident that now is the appropriate point in the market cycle to dispose of this asset and reinvest capital into other major regional opportunities.”
Aberdeen Asset Management — an international investment management group which manages both institutional and private investment funds — has so far given no indication what it intends to do with its latest acquisition.
In November, 2013, Lloyds Banking Group sold Scottish Widows Investment Partnership to Aberdeen Asset Management for £660m. The deal made the Aberdeen-headquartered AAM the largest listed fund manager in Europe, with an investment pot of £350bn.
JLL, which handled the Network Rail negotiations, recently reported a sharp rise in demand for office space in Scotland’s commercial capital. “Supply has been consistently decreasing during the year just past,” said Reid. “With an overall vacancy rate in December of 10.2 per cent and new build Grade A vacancy at just 1.5 per cent.”
He added: “That figure is expected to continue to tighten until speculative developments come to the market in mid-2015 and bringing approximately 418,000 sq ft of badly needed office space to the market.”
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