Cornerstone Real Estate Advisers LLC has completed the sale of 40 Gracechurch Street in the City of London to the Taiwanese insurance company Shin Kong Life for £136.15m (€187.21m).
Cornerstone acquired the newly developed 122,494ft² (11,380m²) building on behalf of an institutional investor for £94m (€129.5m) in August 2013, at which point it was just 48% let. Redevelopment works were completed in early 2014 as part of a wider plan to reposition the asset. With the works complete Cornerstone then launched a new marketing campaign which led to a series of successful new lettings at the building, with full occupancy reached when Hampden Capital plc took the 12,628ft² (1,173m²) fifth floor on a 10-year lease in August this year.
Darren Hutchinson, senior director of Cornerstone Europe said: “This transaction marks the conclusion of what has been a very successful investment and represents our first full turnaround of a large scale London office asset. Having acquired the property just over two years ago we transformed 40 Gracechurch Street from a half empty and underperforming asset into a fully let, prime institutional quality City of London office, backed by strong covenants providing high quality income.”
Nick Pink, CIO of Cornerstone Europe said: “The team has created a high quality prime investment which serves as an exemplar of the specialist Central London skills we have in house at Cornerstone. We will continue to consider London opportunities together with those across Europe as we redeploy sales proceeds on behalf of our client.”
GM Real Estate acted for Cornerstone while JLL acted for Shin Kong Life.
