Sinar Mas Selling London Building to Malaysia State-Owned Firm for $292M

Sinar Mas Land continues to trade actively in London’s real estate market, with the Singapore-listed property firm on Wednesday announcing a deal to sell a commercial building near Westminster for £247.5 million ($292.3 million).

The developer controlled by Indonesia’s Widjaja family has agreed to sell the freehold property known as 33 Horseferry Road to LTH Property Holdings 3 Ltd, Sinar Mas said in a filing with the Singapore Exchange. The buyer is a wholly owned subsidiary of Lembaga Tabung Haji, a Malaysian state-owned firm that funds pilgrimages to Mecca by making Shariah-compliant investments.

The five-storey building has a net leasable area of 180,600 square feet (16,778 square metres), including 163,761 square feet of Grade A office space and 16,839 square feet of ground-floor retail space. The offices are fully leased to the British government’s Secretary of State for Transport until 2033.

“The proposed disposal provides an opportunity for the group to realise an attractive rate of return on its investment,” Sinar Mas said in the filing. The company bought 33 Horseferry Road in June 2017 for £188.6 million, suggesting a gain of more than 31 percent once the transaction is completed in early August.

Heart of Victoria

33 Horseferry Road occupies a prominent location in Victoria, a key commercial and residential district of central London, with the property less than 10 minutes south of Westminster Abbey by foot.

Lembaga Tabung Haji is paying roughly £1,370 ($1,618) per square foot of net leasable area for its new prize. The Malaysian group’s previous London holdings have included an office building, 151 Buckingham Palace Road, which was sold to a consortium of private investors led by Hong Kong’s Gaw Capital Partners in 2015.

News of the Horseferry deal comes two months after Sinar Mas revealed plans to buy a commercial building in London’s Charing Cross area for £195 million ($238 million).

The freehold building at 32-50 Strand, comprising 139,000 square feet across basement, ground and eight upper floors, was purchased from London-based property giant Land Securities Group, known as Landsec.

Familiar Grounds

The acquisition of 32-50 Strand marked Sinar Mas’s re-entry as a buyer in the London market after a multi-year lull.

In April of last year, the firm chaired by Muktar Widjaja revealed that it was selling its entire interest in 10 Great Pulteney Street, a building known as Unlimited House, for £72 million ($99.3 million) in cash to UK online fashion retailer Boohoo.

Built in 1997, the seven-storey Unlimited House (formerly known as Warwick House) comprises 44,116 square feet of Grade A office space and a self-contained five-unit residential block of 2,928 square feet.

Sinar Mas previously acquired the Alphabeta office building at Finsbury Square for £259 million in 2015. The Indonesian giant also holds overseas properties in Malaysia, Australia and mainland China, where its portfolio of projects includes Shanghai Sinar Mas Plaza and the Shanghai Arch, the Shanghai Bund Center and the Ningbo Sinar Mas Plaza in Zhejiang province.