Norges Bank Real Estate Management (NBREM) has bought a central London leasehold investment in a joint venture with The Crown Estate, from a UK-Canadian pension joint venture.
NBREM, which manages Norway’s NOK8.4trn (€888bn) sovereign wealth fund, is buying 25% of the leasehold interest in the property — 30 Warwick Street — and The Crown Estate is buying the other 75%, according to Norges Bank.
On behalf of the Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), Norway’s oil fund, NBREM is paying £28.8m (€32.9m) for its share of the asset, which it said valued the whole thing at £115m.
The seller is a joint venture between Aviva Life & Pensions UK and Canada’s Public Sector Pension Investment Board.
NBREM said the property was unencumbered by debt and that no financing was involved in the deal.
The Crown Estate, which manages properties owned by the UK monarch — but not the Queen’s private assets — already owned the freehold interest in Warwick Street property, but NBREM said the seller had a leasehold interest with a 116-year unexpired term.
The Crown Estate will be the asset manager of the property, which has 75,000sqft of office space.
Norges Bank has an ongoing London property investment link-up with The Crown Estate, called the Regent Street Partnership, which was formed in 2010 when the SWF made its first ever property investment — a stake in The Crown Estate’s Regent Street portfolio.
Warwick Street lies a block to the east of London’s Regent Street, and close to Air Street, where NBREM doubled the size of one of its investments last September.
