Beijing-based Reignwood Properties has been named as the company behind the £92m acquisition of a City of London office block. Although contracts were exchanged last month the identity of the owner of the Corn Exchange at 55 Mark Lane has only just been made public. Reignwood has bought the office building from CS Euroreal, Credit Suisse Asset Management.
The EC3 deal is Reignwood’s second foray into the London property market. In 2011 it joined forces with Singaporean real estate investment company, KOP Properties, to purchase 10 Trinity Square. Planning consent was secured the following year to convert the historic Grade II listed building into a 120-bedroom hotel and 41 high-end flats. The 91-year-old building is situated opposite the Tower of London and featured in the Bond film, Skyfall.
That £120m redevelopment hit problems last year when project manager EC Harris, structural engineer Buro Happold, M&E engineer Red and interior design firm David Collins Studio were all dropped after Reignwood bought out KOP Properties to take sole charge of the scheme. The change in ownership prompted a review of the project and a switch to a design and build approach, with Ireland’s Donban Contracting appointed to lead the project and appoint a design team.
The Corn Exchange was brought to the market in October, 2013, with the sale handled by Jones Lang LaSalle. Originally built in 1996 by British Land, CS Euroreal bought the development from Strategic Real Estate Advisors for £95.5m eight years later. The building has been substantially refurbished over the past two years and now offers 160,000sq ft of office space with retail units on the lower ground, ground and all seven upper floors. It produces an income of more than £6.1m.
Founded in Thailand 30 years ago, the Reignwood Group has grown from a company with initial activities in real estate development and tourism to a multinational conglomerate with investments in key industries including financial services, real estate, health & wellness and energy. Today the Reignwood Group has offices in Singapore, Thailand, Canada, the United States and Britain.
Among Reignwood’s handful of high-end developments in China are the country’s first Fairmont hotel — the Reignwood Pine Valley Golf Club & Resort in Beijing — it also owns several office and residential schemes in the Chinese capital.
The group has also had its failures. Wonderland was a 120-acre amusement park located in the Changping District about 20 miles outside of Beijing. Proposed and planned by Reignwood to be the largest amusement park in Asia, construction came to a halt in 1998 following financial problems with local officials. A 2008 attempt to re-start the project also collapsed.
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