Malaysia's EPF offloads London office property to Chinese Estates

Malaysia’s Employees Provident Fund (EPF) has sold a London office property to Chinese Estates for £175m (€208m).

The fund has completed its sale of 11/12 St James’s Square at a net initial yield of 4.45%, according to CBRE, which advised Hong Kong-based Chinese Estates.

The 80,000 sqft building, let to Blackstone and Marble Bar Asset Maanagement, was sold by Savills Investment Management for EPF.

The sale by EPF comes two years after it offloaded its One Sheldon Square office property in London’s Paddington district to listed property company British Land for £210m.

Late last year, EPF’s deputy CEO responsible for investment, Mohamad Nasir Ab Latif, told IPE Real Estate that the fund had “some initial concern” over the UK’s exit from the European Union as “nobody expected it to happen”.

“Things will take time to pan out,” he said. “In the longer term, the UK economy could be impacted, but at this stage we do not know what those impacts might be. So we are monitoring closely.”

The deal is Chinese Estates’ fourth in London in the past two years.

James Rood, CBRE senior director in the firm’s central London investment, said the deal is “another example of the strength of appetite and commitment from overseas capital, particularly from Asia, for prime London real estate”.

In the same square, Green Property this year sold numbers 7 and 8 to an unnamed Asian investor for £246m at a yield of 3.69%.

The Asian investor paid around £3,425 per sqft for the two buildings which contain 62,200sqft and 30,000sqft of commercial space.

Nearby, 3 St James’s Square was sold for £135m last month, also to a Hong Kong-based investor.