Brookfield Makes £700M Profit On London Skyscraper
Canadian giant Brookfield has been spectacularly vindicated in its decision to speculatively develop a huge City of London office tower.
In its third quarter results last week, Brookfield Property Partners confirmed it had completed the refinancing of 100 Bishopsgate, the 1M SF office tower in the centre of London’s financial district.
The refinancing put a value of £1.5B on the building, Brookfield told analysts. With the tower costing £800M to build, that is a profit of £700M ($900M). The valuation gives the scheme a 7.9% yield on cost.
Some of that profit is of course theoretical, but the refinancing meant it had already taken a profit of $450M (£350M) out of the scheme.
React News first reported the new loan on the building, which it said was provided by a consortium of First Abu Dhabi Bank, AXA, Bank of China, ING and Standard Chartered Bank.
Brookfield said the loan was for five years at an interest rate margin of 2.5%, and the building will produce funds from operations, essentially net income, of $40M (£31M) a year.
The building is 83% leased, with tenants including Royal Bank of Canada, Freshfields and Paul Hastings.
Brookfield bought into the scheme in 2012, when the City of London leasing market was still in the doldrums. When it pushed the button to begin construction in 2014 it was the largest speculative City development of the cycle.
