新加坡星桥腾飞集团| Ascendas-Singbridge Buys Seoul Office Tower for $92M

Miguel Ko, group CEO of Ascendas-Singbridge

Singapore’s Ascendas-Singbridge is adding to its office acquisitions in South Korea by picking up a newly-completed, mid-rise office building in Seoul’s Gangnam district for S$124.3 million ($91.8 million).

A fund managed by the SGX-listed real estate firm acquired the 15-storey, 19,578 square metre ICON Yeoksam, with Ascendas-Singbridge unveiling both the new privately-held investment vehicle and the office deal in a single announcement.

The seller is said to be a joint venture led by a unit of Seoul-based GL Industrial Development, which developed the building and held a 40 percent stake. Korea’s Mirae Asset Securities and Meritz Securities each held a 20 percent share in the project, according to a report by  local news outlet ChosunBiz.

The acquisition by Ascendas Asset Management Co boosts the group’s assets under management in Korea to S$800 million ($590.8 million), expanding its total lettable area in the country by one-fifth to 1.3 million square feet (139,355 square metres).

Ascendas Adds Another Downtown Office to Seoul Portfolio

Icon Yeoksam in Seoul’s Gangnam district sold for $92 million

“With the support of our investors, we are pleased to have successfully acquired ICON Yeoksam, which has good connectivity and high visibility in the core GBD [Gangnam Business District] area,” commented William Tay, CEO of Korea Operations for Ascendas-Singbridge. “In view of its strategic location, the mid-sized building has already attracted the attention of numerous blue-chip companies seeking to set up their offices there.”

Completed in October, ICON Yeoksam is located at 706-19 Yeoksam-dong within the key business district south of the Han River, nearby the Seolleung station on subway Line 2.

Since 2002,Ascendas-Singbridge has built up a portfolio of centrally located office buildings in Seoul including Anam Tower, Citibank Center and Jongro Place. This past July, a fund controlled by the Singapore firm sold Signature Towers Seoul to IGIS Asset Management for a 2017 record price of $635 million.

Singaporean Builder Continues Overseas Push

Ascendas-Singbridge bought the asset through its fifth single-asset office fund in the country, the S$39.6 million ($29.2 million) Ascendas Korea Office Qualified Private Real Estate Investment Trust No. 5 (AKOPREIT5). The privately-held trust, which was established in late September, is a 10-year closed-end vehicle and is said to have secured debt financing to cover the remainder of the acquisition cost.

Ascendas-Singbridge, which has a total of over S$20 billion ($14.77 billion) in assets under management, has moved aggressively to invest in overseas assets this year. The developer jointly owned by Singaporean government-controlled Temasek Holdings and JTC Corporation recently completed the acquisition of 66 Gouldburn Street, a grade A office tower in downtown Sydney for A$252 million ($200 million), a deal that was first announced in August.

In September, Singapore-listed Ascendas REIT, which is managed by a unit of Ascendas-Singbridge, scooped up a 14-storey office tower on the outskirts of Brisbane, Australia for A$83.83 million ($66.6 million).

Ascendas-Singbridge is also ramping up its activities in India, revealing in June a $500 million joint venture with Bangalore-based Firstspace Realty to invest in logistics properties in the country. And in August, the Ascendas India Growth Programme – a fund set up by Ascendas and Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC – acquired a 16-acre business park site in Pune, India.