The Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS) and Temasek are buying a central London office asset.
OMERS’s real estate arm, Oxford Properties, and the Singaporean government’s Temasek are paying £415m ($580m) for the Blue Fin Building in London.
The fully let, 497,000 sq ft asset, south of the river Thames, is expected to be sold by year-end.
Publishing group Time, the asset’s main tenant, is selling the building and will lease back 160,000 sq ft.
Paul Brundage, executive vice-president and senior managing director at Oxford Properties Europe, said the Blue Fin asset was a “great addition” to Oxford’s European portfolio.
The company, he said, now has more than CAD7bn (€4.8bn) of real estate in London and Paris.
OMERS has previously invested with Temasek, having bought a 50% stake in MidCity Place in 2011.
“This transaction,” Brundage said, “reinforces Oxford’s belief that specific emerging live-work-play destinations will outperform over time as a result of infrastructure improvements and shifting occupier dynamics.”
Time Inc. executive vice-president Jeff Bairstow said it was “logical to monetise the asset”.
Temasek was earlier this year part of an international consortium, including the UK’s Native Land and Malaysia’s Amcorp Properties, to buy a mixed-use London development less than 1km away for £308m from The Carlyle Group.
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