Michael Shvo, partners secure $545M loan for Coca-Cola building

The debt was provided by Goldman Sachs and Bank of America

The Coca-Cola building at 711 Fifth Avenue and Michael Shvo (Credit: Google Maps)
The Coca-Cola building at 711 Fifth Avenue and Michael Shvo (Credit: Google Maps)

 

The Coca-Cola building at 711 Fifth Avenue and Michael Shvo (Credit: Google Maps)

The Coca-Cola building at 711 Fifth Avenue and Michael Shvo (Credit: Google Maps)

A partnership led by Michael Shvo has secured a $545 million loan to refinance the Coca-Cola building, The Real Deal has learned.

The loan, provided by Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, will replace $600 million debt at the iconic property at 711 Fifth Avenue. The transaction closed last week, according to people familiar with the deal. JLL represented Shvo’s group.

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Goldman Sachs declined to comment. Bank of America did not respond to a request for comment.

Shvo’s group — which includes Turkish developer Bilgili Holding, private equity firm Deutsche Finance America and German pension fund Bayerische Versorgungskammer (BVK) — acquired the property in September for $937 million.

The new loan covers only 90 percent of the existing debt at the building, provided by JPMorgan. The bank initially held $700 million debt in the building, but $100 million was paid off by BVK, the primary equity partner, when the acquisition occurred. Alongside the new financing, BVK poured an additional $55 million into the building to cover the difference, a person familiar with the transaction said.

Shvo’s takeover of the building has been closely watched. Last year, the building’s namesake owner, the Coca-Cola Company, snubbed Shvo’s group and chose to sell it to a partnership consisting of Nightingale Properties and Wafra Capital Partners for $909 million — almost $50 million lower than Shvo’s initial offer.

Weeks after the building sold to Nightingale’s group in September, the building was effectively flipped to Shvo’s group in a transaction that valued the building at $937 million. Questions were later raised about why Coca-Cola overlooked a higher bid, and what advice it received from its brokers at Cushman and Wakefield.

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