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Citi vaults into record book with $697M buy in Hong Kong
New York-based bank's purchase of office tower is largest in Chinese city-state
Midtown East-based bank Citigroup set a record for the largest office-building acquisition in Hong Kong yesterday with the $697 million purchase of a 512,000-square-foot tower.
The global bank plans to relocate 5,000 of its Hong Kong employees to the building, which was previously owned by an affiliate of financial real estate firm Wheelock and Company. The building is under construction and slated to open by the end of next year.
Citigroup generates roughly $1 billion in revenue per year in Hong Kong alone.
“The lack of supply in Hong Kong has been a challenge for many large occupiers, such as Citi, who are in Hong Kong for the long term,” Sigrid Zialcita of Cushman & Wakefield in Singapore told Bloomberg News. “Hong Kong has not lost its luster as a regional financial hub, even with competition from Singapore and Shanghai.”
In April, Citigroup tapped Cushman & Wakefield to manage all 27 million square feet of the company’s commercial property in the U.S., including its Tribeca headquarters, as previously reported. [Bloomberg News] — Mark Maurer
