NH Investment consortium likely new owner of Seoul Square

2018.09.13 13:10:56 | 2018.09.13 15:27:51

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South Korea¡¯s NH Investment & Securities Co. has been named the preferred candidate to own the Seoul Square building in downtown Seoul by offering more than 1 trillion won ($892.3 million).

The Korean brokerage said Wednesday it has teamed up with Singapore-based asset management firm Keppel Capital to bid for the property and expects to close the deal by the end of November.

The Seoul Square is an office building located right across Seoul Station, one of the major gateways to Seoul. Some of the tenants in the nearly-fully-occupied building include Mercedes-Benz, WeWork and Siemens. NH Investment projects annual returns of more than 6 percent from long-term leases, which are often nine years or longer.

¡°The Seoul Square is a commercial building in a prime location that turns out decent and stable returns,¡± said NH Investment. ¡°A number of urban development factors are likely to drive its value further up, such as the city rejuvenation project and the new GTX high-speed rail network that will run through Seoul Station.¡±

The building was built in 1977 as the headquarters of Daewoo Group - a household chaebol name along with Samsung, LG and Hyundai that fueled Korea¡¯s rapid economic growth from the rubbles of the 1950-53 Korean War. Once the country¡¯s second-largest conglomerate, Daewoo eventually collapsed under crushing debt in the wake of the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the building, to this day, bears the bitter scars from the country¡¯s worst financial meltdown. Kumho Asiana Group bought the building in 2006 but had to hand it over to U.S. investment bank Morgan Stanley a year later after it too came under a liquidity crunch.

Alpha Investment Partners, a Singapore-based real estate management firm, acquired the building in 2011 for 800 billion won and has recently put it up for sale to recoup its investment.

By Moon Il-ho and Kim Hyo-jin

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