Taiwan-based Cathay Life Insurance has paid £575m for a prestige City of London office and retail block less than 200 yards from the Bank of England.
The 440,000 sq ft Walbrook Building remained empty long after its completion in 2010 by Minerva when it was a publicly traded UK developer. The company was acquired the following year for £203m by clients of Ares Management and Delancey Real Estate Asset Management.
Selling off its Walbrook Street property is Minerva’s fourth asset disposal in as many years with the two recent sales of the Ram Brewery to Greenland Group and the fully-let St Botolph Building to Deka Investments.
Offering some of the largest trading floor plates in Europe, the Walbrook Building is located on a 1.6-acre City site, directly opposite Bloomberg’s new European headquarters and just yards from Threadneedle Street.
Among the companies leasing space behind its highly distinctive contemporary curved façade are: the payment processing company Worldpay, which has 98,000 sq ft; the US-based global insurance brokerage, Arthur J. Gallagher & Co, with 100,000 sq ft; business process service company, Xchanging, which occupies 50,000 sq ft, and Vanguard Asset Management with 52,000 sq ft.
At ground level the building has 35,000 sq ft of shops and restaurants. Two firms which have recently signed long-term retail leases are Waitrose and Virgin Active, which has taken 24,000 sq ft.
“We are attracted by the transparent trading system in London and the prospect of about 4.8 per cent in investment return for the Walbrook,” explained Cathay Life’s executive vice-president, Abel Lin. His company’s acquisition of the Walbrook Building is the largest single asset sale in London this year.
The Cathay executive also confirmed: “We will continue seeking property targets in big cities overseas including London, Frankfurt, Munich and Tokyo.”
Cathay Life is part owner of Taipei Financial Center, which operates Taipei 101, Taiwan’s tallest skyscraper. And Cathay Financial Holding Co — the insurer’s parent company — bought the Woolgate Exchange Trust last August for £311m, effectively taking control of around 351,000sq ft of City of London real estate.
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