Nomura Seeking $466 Million For Sale Leaseback of London HQ

Bloomberg - May 8, 2007

Nomura Holdings Inc., Japan's largest securities firm, put its London headquarters building on sale for at least 234 million pounds ($466 million).

Real estate consultant Drivers Jonas said in an e-mailed statement today that it has been hired to sell No.1 St. Martin's Le Grand, an office tower containing 275,000 square feet of space near St. Paul's Cathedral, which Nomura intends to lease back.

Nomura is the latest firm to plan a sale and leaseback of its headquarters to take advantage of escalating prices for office buildings in central London. Spanish real estate company Metrovacesa SA set a record for a single building in the U.K. last month, when it bought HSBC Holdings Plc's Docklands headquarters for 1.09 billion pounds.

Details of Nomura's initial investment in the building weren't immediately available. Annual rental income would represent about 4.75 percent of the initial asking price and will grow 3 percent annually, Drivers Jonas said.

Central London offices were the best-performing sector of the U.K. commercial real estate market in the first quarter, as a shortage of available space lifted rents by almost 5 percent for new or freshly refurbished properties, CB Richard Ellis said. In the City of London district, the main financial district, rents have climbed 19 percent to 59 pounds a square foot by the end of March from a year earlier. Sphere: Related Content