Hong Kong investor completes Farringdon office block buy

Hong Kong investor Patrick Wong has completed the purchase of 20 Farringdon Street, EC4, for around £120m from HB Reavis. The building, completed in 2018, provides 85,000 sq ft of office space and is let to tenants including Berkeley Group, which occupies the 6,951 sq ft ninth floor. Floors two to five, totalling 34,527 sq ft, are occupied by HB Reavis’s co-working provider HubHub. HB Reavis acquired the site in 2014 for £29m from Artesian. It is not the first property Patrick Wong, the son of billionaire Dah Sing Bank founder David Wong Shou-Yeh, has acquired in central London. Through his company Tenacity Group, Wong owns 70 and 55 Gracechurch Street, EC3. He is in the process of consulting on plans to redevelop 70 Gracechurch Street into a 33-storey (156m) tower, providing around 600,000 sq ft of office and retail space, with office floorplates of circa 23,000 sq ft. The sale is one of the largest to complete since lockdown. However, the number of collapsed deals has risen to total more than £1bn across the UK’s capital markets during the period, according to Cushman & Wakfield. The amount of available central London office assets is 20% of what it should normally be, C&W found. Research from CBRE shows outbound investment from Hong Kong stood at $9bn for 2019, $600m down on 2018. However, 41% of respondents from Hong Kong told CBRE they would look to invest outside the Asia Pacific region this year. One agent, who did not wish to be named, has indicated an uptick in enquiries from Hong Kong recently, as the region emerges from the cloud of Covid-19. To send feedback, e-mail louise.dransfield@egi.co.uk or tweet @DransfieldL or @estatesgazette