Cushman & Wakefield Healey & Baker (C&W/H&B) has sold East-West Business Center, a prime office building in Budapest’s CBD, on behalf of Swedish developer Skanska. The purchaser was the Irish fund Polonia. The transaction closed on 30th March for a purchase price of EUR 42 million.
This is the second office purchase in Hungary for Polonia, which focuses on Central European property investments.
“The sale marks the advance of Irish funds in Central Europe and further underlines Skanska’s importance as a key developer of prime investment grade assets in the region,” highlights Charles Taylor, managing director of C&W/H&B in Hungary.
Completed in 1991, East-West Business Center was Budapest’s first modern class A office building and Skanska’s first office development in Central Europe. Prominently located in Budapest’s Central Business District, the property is one of Budapest’s most successful office developments with top international tenants including Accenture, British Airways, KLM, AIG, Reuters, Hitachi and E.On.
“East-West Business Center was an excellent opportunity to purchase a proven landmark office building and, as such, generated considerable interest from a wide variety of investors,” Taylor adds.
The East-West Business Center sale follows closely on the heels of last year’s sale of four of Skanska’s newly developed retail warehouse properties, two in Budapest and two in Prague. The four properties represented total leasable floor area of 36,000 sqm, and were fully let to Electro World, a wholly owned subsidiary of leading UK electrical retailer Dixons. The purchaser was an international property fund managed by UK-based property management company Pricoa Investment Management Limited, part of Prudential Financial Inc. Cushman & Wakefield Healey & Baker acted for Skanska in the sale, which represented Central Europe’s first cross-border retail portfolio sale.
Source: Cushman & Wakefield Healey & Baker
