Barings confirms £130m Capital House buy
Barings has bought City office block Capital House from German asset manager DWS Group in a £130.5m deal.
The deal, which confirms EG’s report from earlier this month, sees Barings take control of the 125,000 sq ft building, which sits between Bank and Monument Tube stations at 85 King William Street, EC4.
Capital House contains about 110,000 sq ft of office space. Tenants include Brookfield Financial, DTZ investors, Alpha Bank London, IT consultant GRT UK, law firm Beale & Company and Mercury Pharma, while retail tenants on the ground floor include Sainsbury’s and Pret A Manger. It has a WALT of 6.2 years.
Barings has bought City office block Capital House from German asset manager DWS Group in a £130.5m deal.
The deal, which confirms EG’s report from earlier this month, sees Barings take control of the 125,000 sq ft building, which sits between Bank and Monument Tube stations at 85 King William Street, EC4.
Capital House contains about 110,000 sq ft of office space. Tenants include Brookfield Financial, DTZ investors, Alpha Bank London, IT consultant GRT UK, law firm Beale & Company and Mercury Pharma, while retail tenants on the ground floor include Sainsbury’s and Pret A Manger. It has a WALT of 6.2 years.
Barings will carry out significant works on the site, including refurbishment of three empty floors, enlarging and renewing the reception area and installing additional showers and bike storage.
Darren Hutchinson, Barings’ head of UK real estate, said the deal was “a rare opportunity to create unrivalled office accommodation through the repositioning of the building and refurbishment of vacant floors to provide flexible internal and external space to meet current occupier requirements”.
“This acquisition is also a clear endorsement of the enduring appeal of London as a global business hub as people begin to return to the office,” he added.
Barings’ European real estate head Gunther Deutsch added: “Covid-19 made us look much more closely into central business district locations as we believe that an attractive location combined with an attractive building quality will continue to be in strong demand by occupiers.”
The deal comes after a stalled 2020 sales process, which initially priced the building at £145m, was relaunched this year. Agents were appointed to find a buyer for the nine-storey block in November but the process was put on hold when England entered the third national lockdown.
DWS, which was previously Deutsche Bank’s asset management arm, bought the building in 2010 from Commerz Grundbesitz Investmentgesellschaft, according to Radius Data Exchange, for £92m, reflecting a yield of 5.9%.
Barings, which was advised by Savills and CMS, has roughly £10.5bn of property assets under management across the globe.
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Image courtesy of FTI Consulting
