Chiswick Park 'Bought' By Chinese Investors

CIC reported to be paying £780 million for office development

The China Investment Corporation has finalised its acquistion of the Chiswick Park office development.

CIC have agreed a reported fee of £780 million with current owner, American investment group Blackstone. The deal has not come as a surprise and has been close to completion since the end of November 2013.

The purchase represents the latest in a string of major acquisitions by the China Investment Corporation in Southern England; most notably, the company paid $700m for a 10% in Heathrow Airport last year.

The Park has over 7,000 employees and buildings are leased to companies including PepsiCo Inc., Tullow Oil Plc, Walt Disney Co., Swarovski and Starbucks and Aker Solutions.

Blackstone refinanced the Business Park with two loans totalling £600million earlier this year after failing to sell in 2012 for its target price of £800million. It was thought at the time that this signalled its intention to retain the property for some time.

Blackstone paid £480 million for the project in 2011, and according to Property Week, have made a £250million profit from Chiswick Business Park, when net expenditure of £45 million on Building 6 is taken into account.

Blackstone will continue to asset manage the 1.3m sq ft site and will retain the final office block on the site. The 12-storey Building 7 will offer 334'000 sq ft of lettable space when construction is finished and Blackstone hope to achieve rents of £50/sq ft here. The scheduled completion date is in December 2014.

Both Blackstone and CIC are declining press requests for a comment on the deal.

January 7, 2014