Tall & Urban News

A consortium led by South Korea’s top brokerage house Mirae Asset Daewoo Co. is in exclusive negotiations to buy a landmark building worth ₩1 trillion (US$960 million) in Paris, France, which would make it the biggest overseas real-estate investment by a Korean institutional investor.

Mirae Asset Daewoo said on March 3 that its consortium with Amundi Immobilier, a wholly-owned subsidiary of France’s asset manager Amundi, was named as the preferred bidder for the Tour Majunga building located in La Défense, a major business district located three kilometers west of the city limits of Paris.

The Korean brokerage and its French partner will invest ₩400 billion (US$355 million) in the coveted trophy asset in Paris, with a pool of other institutional investors. The rest of the purchase price would be financed in loans from local financial institutions.

Tour Majunga is the second-tallest building in the La Défense district, which has been mostly leased out to global names including Deloitte, and AXA Investment Managers under long-term contracts. The investment is expected to yield a return of about seven percent per year for the next nine and a half years, until the contracts with the current tenants expire, according to the brokerage.

If Mirae Asset Daewoo successfully completes the deal, it would be the biggest overseas real estate investment by Korean capital. Mirae Asset Daewoo, which has shown a voracious appetite for overseas properties recently, last year invested ₩320 billion won (US$284 million) in a senior debt issued to finance the US$5.2 billion acquisition of The Center, a landmark skyscraper in Hong Kong, with Singapore’s GIC.

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