Foreign Property News | Posted by Hnin Ei Khin
Hana Financial Group is angling to buy an office property in the City of London that is being converted into a major WeWork coworking space.
The current owner of the One Poultry building, Aermont Capital, is asking for about $240M for the property.
One Poultry is a distinctive pink-and-yellow postmodern structure completed opposite the Bank of England in 1998.
Last year, WeWork inked a deal to replace former financial services tenant Aviva there.
Talks by Korean investor Hana Financial have not been finalized, Bloomberg reports, citing anonymous sources.
If the deal goes through, it would be the latest property trade in a wave of capital coming to the U.K. from East Asia — and especially Korea — looking for real estate.
East Asian investors are looking to dodge higher prices at home, and take advantage of the relative weakness of the pound.
Overseas capital continues to more specifically target the U.K. office market, accounting for more than 70% of purchasers during the second quarter of 2018.
That is the highest volume since 2014, according to Cushman & Wakefield's Q2 2018 report on the market.
Investors’ appetite for London offices is showing no sign of slowing down, either, the brokerage said.
Separate from the One Poultry deal, Samsung Life Insurance is in talks to sell Commerzbank AG’s City of London HQ to Singapore-based Wing Tai Holdings Ltd., Bloomberg also reports.
Ref : Property Report
