The Blackstone Group buys more
A week after The Blackstone Group announced several acquisitions, totaling $1.95 billion in sales price, the firm completed another two acquisitions for its global portfolio.
The Carlyle Group announced on July 4th completed the sale of the Alban Gate office building in the City of London to Blackstone for £300 million ($513 million). IREN reported the planned acquisition in April.
Alban Gate is located on London Wall in the heart of the city, comprising 382,000 square feet of office space and more than 22 floors. Since Carlyle acquired the property it has been fully let to J.P. Morgan, which undertook an extensive refurbishment and earlier this year sublet much of the space to law firm Nabarros.
This is the fourth successful exit Carlyle has made from the portfolio of six landmark central London properties that were formerly part of the White Tower 2006-3 plc CMBS, which it acquired in July 2010 for £671 million ($1.15 billion).
The transaction follows the sales of Millennium Bridge House in November 2013 for £87.6 million ($150.1 million), 60 Victoria Embankment in June 2011 and the BSI tower in Chiswick in September 2010 for £30.5 million ($52.25 million). Carlyle will continue to hold the two remaining assets in the portfolio, the Sampson House data center and Ludgate House office, which are located immediately south of Blackfriars Bridge, opposite the City of London.
Carlyle acquired the White Tower portfolio on behalf of its third pan-European real estate fund, Carlyle European Real Estate Partners III.
In addition, Blackstone reportedly has acquired One Market Plaza in San Francisco for approximately $1.2 billion, or $823 per square foot. According to data by Real Capital Analytics, the sale was completed this month. IREN reported the announced sale in April.
The purchase was for a 49 percent partial interest in the 1.46 million-square-foot office. The seller was Paramount Group.
