London Landmark Office On Sale For £125M After Price Drops A Third In Five Years

Well-known London office building One Poultry is set to be put up for sale by its Korean owner at a sizable discount to what it paid for the building less than five years ago.

The 151K SF postmodern building is set to be offered for £125M by Hana Alternative Asset Management, Bloomberg reported. Hana bought the asset for £185M in 2018 from fund manager Aermont. That deal was completed with a £104M loan from Bank of Ireland. 

The 110K SF office element of the building is let in its entirety to WeWork, and the upper floor is home to City fine dining institution the Coq d’Argent, with retail space on the ground floor. 

Bloomberg said the building has been on sale before but failed to find a buyer and that the loan-to-value covenant of the debt facility had been breached. It is part of a wider trend of older office buildings suffering valuation falls because of the need to upgrade them to meet environmental, social and corporate governance requirements. 

The building was completed in 1997 and designed by architect James Stirling. 

Other Korean investors have extended loans on City office buildings in the past six months that were at or near maturity following sales processes.

Mirae Asset Daewoo and NH Investments, advised by Valesco, have rolled a £149M loan on the 287K SF Cannon Bridge House in the City. The building was bought for £248M in 2018, with German lender Aareal providing the loan.

Aareal has provided a one-year extension on the loan, which was due to mature next month.

Elsewhere in the City, Samsung SRA Asset Management has agreed to a three-year extension on a loan of around £200M secured against the 385K SF 200 Aldersgate. The building was purchased for £315M in 2018. 

The loan was provided by Nuveen, and it matured earlier this year.

Cannon Bridge House was up for sale for £320M in 2021, according to React News, while 200 Aldersgate was up for sale for £350M earlier this year.