Pharma R&D firm relocating offices to Lower Manhattan following $7B merger

Syneos Health signed a lease for 86K sf at Brookfield’s 200 Vesey Street

200 Vesey Street
200 Vesey Street

UPDATED, Nov. 28, 4:30 p.m.: Syneos Health, which following a $7 billion merger last year is the now second-largest company in the expanding pharmaceutical-research industry, is growing into a new office at Brookfield Place in Lower Manhattan.

The biopharma outsourcing provider signed a lease for just shy of 86,500 square feet with American Express, which owns the 1.3 million square feet it occupies at 200 Vesey Street, sources told The Real Deal.

Syneos will relocate multiple offices spread across Manhattan, including its Meatpacking District location at Jamestown’s 450 West 15th Street, onto the 39th and 40th floors of the 2.5 million-square-foot office tower.

“Syneos Health was looking for a large block of high-end office space in Manhattan that would allow the company to bring multiple parts of its business together under one roof,” said JLL’s Erika Jean McNeil, who was part of the brokerage team that represented the tenant in negotiations.

McNeil added that that the new space supports Syneos’ “cultural and business needs,” and the company’s employees and customers will benefit from 200 Vesey’s proximity to the Oculus transportation hub.

JLL’s Jonathan Fanuzzi, Kip Orban, Paul Glickman and Matt Astrachan were also part of the team that represented Syneos. Lisa Kiell, Michael Shenot, Ed DiTolla and Andrew Coe of JLL negotiated the deal on the landlord side.

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The asking rent wasn’t provided, but the lease comes with a term of 10 years.

Syneos – which is headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina, and trades on the Nasdaq stock exchange with a market capitalization of $5 billion – was created by the merger last year of inVentiv Health and INC Research in a deal that assessed the new company at an enterprise value of $7.4 billion.

The company specializes in performing research and development for pharmaceutical firms that are increasingly outsourcing those activities in order to cut down on costs.

Brookfield, meanwhile, signed PR Newswire to nearly 35,000 square feet at 200 Vesey Street in August, and in April inked a deal with the nonprofit MDRC for 55,000 square feet.

The building’s largest tenant, the Royal Bank of Canada, last year signed an early renewal for its 400,000 square feet of space for 15 years. Brookfield in late 2016 refinanced the tower with a $290 million loan from Wells Fargo.

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly identified Brookfield Property Partners as the landlord who signed a lease with Syneos Health. The landlord is American Express.