A building in London just sold for $100 million… per floor

Thu Jun 14 2018
Mark Cooper (3173 articles)
A building in London just sold for $100 million… per floor

A 13-floor “groundscraper” in London has been sold for $ 1.3 billion.

The building in the city’s financial district was bought by a subsidiary of CK Asset Holdings, the property company founded by Hong Kong’s richest man, Li Ka-shing.

5 Broadgate is currently the London headquarters of Swiss bank UBS (UBS) and 5,000 of its workers.

Completed in 2015, the building has four trading floors and seven floors of office space. It also boasts a green roof and an array of solar panels, according to Make, the architecture firm behind the project.

“Groundscrapers” are typically about a dozen stories tall, but they extend horizontally to cover a massive area. Google (GOOGL) is developing one of its own in London.

The sale of 5 Broadgate was announced Thursday by current owners British Land (BTLCY) and GIC, who said the £1 billion ($ 1.3 billion) sale price was “in line” with the building’s valuation in March.

CK Asset Holdings(CHKGF) did not respond to a request for comment.
The building at 5 Broadgate.

Observers had feared the commercial property market in London would crash after Brits voted to leave the European Union in June 2016.

Some companies, including UBS, are planning to move some jobs away from London in order to safeguard their business in the European Union.

But the bottom has not fallen out of the market.

Related: London’s property market is in a coma

The market for homes has slumped, with prices dropping along with the number of sales, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).

But the commercial property market has fared better. RICS said that tenant inquiries picked up slightly in the first quarter, the first increase since the Brexit vote.

Li retired last month at the age of 89 after building a business empire spanning ports, telecommunications and retail.

Mark Cooper

Mark Cooper

Mark Cooper is Political / Stock Market Correspondent. He has been covering Global Stock Markets for more than 6 years.