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Brussels Skyscraper Tempts Korean Investors in $1.4 Billion Deal

Brussels Skyscraper Tempts Korean Investors in $1.4 Billion Deal

(Bloomberg) -- A consortium backed by Korea’s Meritz Securities Co. is in exclusive negotiations to buy the Finance Tower in Brussels for more than 1.3 billion euros ($1.4 billion), people with knowledge of the talks said.

The venture is in talks to buy the building from Dutch property company Breevast BV, which is being advised by CBRE Group Inc., the people said, asking not to be identified as the talks are private. Negotiations are ongoing, they said. The consortium includes European asset manager The Valesco Group, and Seoul-based AIP Asset Management.

Representatives for Meritz did not respond to calls seeking comment outside normal office hours. A spokesman for The Valesco Group declined to comment. A spokesman for Breevast was not immediately able to comment.

Korean investors have been pouring capital into Europe, taking advantage of favorable exchange rates in the hunt for assets that offer long-term income. The Finance Tower is leased to the Belgian government for more than 15 years on inflation-linked contracts and generates rent of almost 60 million euros a year.

The 36-story tower has the most office space of any building in Belgium. The same Meritz-backed consortium bought the U.K. headquarters of Microsoft Corp. for about 100 million pounds ($122.7 million) last year.

Breevast, founded by Dutch real estate investor Frank Zweegers, has been selling assets to repay debt. The company previously entered talks to sell the Finance Tower to a consortium led by Irish real estate investor Derek Quinlan in 2017, EuroProperty magazine reported at the time.

Korean investors accounted for about 10% of all cross-border commercial real estate deal in Europe in the first half of the year, according to broker Savills Plc. Investors from the country spent 6.2 billion euros on European property in the six months through June, the most on record, the broker’s data show.

--With assistance from Ruben Munsterman and Kyungji Cho.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jack Sidders in London at jsidders@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Shelley Robinson at ssmith118@bloomberg.net, Marion Dakers, Patrick Henry

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