CIC to buy London business park from Blackstone - report

The office development located in west London is one of the city's largest and would represent the highest value real estate purchase by the sovereign wealth fund in Europe to date.

According to the Financial Times, talks are advanced and the two parties could reach a deal before the end of November. CIC is reported to be negotiating a price of GBP650 million ($1.04 billion) to GBP800 million. If the transaction goes ahead it would mark the second purchase made by CIC in the UK property market, the last being the GBP245 million acquisition of Deutsche Bank's City of London headquarters in 2012.

Blackstone bought the Chiswick Park complex from a consortium of Aberdeen Asset Management, Schroders and Stanhope in early 2011 for GBP480 million.

It had originally put the park - whose tenants include Pepsi, Swarovski, QVC and Tullow Oil - on the market for around GBP800 million last year but the sale was abandoned after it failed to attract sufficiently high offers. The private equity group instead refinanced the GBP600 million of debt outstanding on the project and worked on constructing and leasing the last of the 12 office blocks on the site.

CIC owns a stake in Blackstone, having invested $3 billion into the private equity group before its initial public offering in 2007. Blackstone is divesting a number of real estate assets in London, including half its stake in the Broadgate Estate in the City for $2.7 billion to Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC Private.

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• Topics
• Europe
• Greater China
• Real estate
• United Kingdom
• Real estate
• CIC
• China
• The Blackstone Group