Norwegian sovereign wealth fund Norges has completed the acquisition of the Fruit & Wool Exchange in the City of London from M&G Real Estate for circa £300 million, CoStar News can reveal.
M&G appointed JLL to find an investment partner to inject as much as £1 billion into a £2.5 billion UK office portfolio including the historic building in 2021. The fund manager has been seeking the investment for its Prudential With-Profits Fund.
CoStar News revealed in December that M&G had entered talks to sell all of the building to Norges. The transaction has now completed.
The London Fruit & Wool Exchange, developed by Exemplar and funded by M&G Real Estate, is a 308,454-square-foot mixed-use development encompassing offices and shops in Spitalfields.
Designed by Bennetts Associates, the building comprises seven storeys and maintains the original 1928 brick and Portland stone façade.
Norges Bank Investment Management is the investment fund for Norges, Norway's £1.3 trillion sovereign wealth fund, and is focused on the long-term management of revenue from the country's oil and gas resources.
It has long focused on UK real estate as a favoured investment, with its ownership of Sheffield's Meadowhall shopping example a notable example. This year it has stepped up its investment, especially in London.
In March it bought a 25% stake in Shaftesbury Capital's £2.7 billion Covent Garden estate in London. It already owned a 23.5% stake in the listed overall business, Shaftesbury Capital.
In January it signed a joint venture with Grosvenor to acquire a 25% stake in a mixed-use portfolio of predominately office and retail assets, around Grosvenor Street and Mount Street, Mayfair, as reported. In May it upped its stake in the Pollen Estate.
Peter Riley, head of capital solutions and UK commercial at M&G said: “As markets stabilise, investor conviction is strengthening and London continues to affirm its position as a leading entry point for global capital. Central London assets with strong fundamentals remain highly sought after. For M&G’s With‑Profits Fund, recycling capital from a mature asset enables us to redeploy into opportunities aligned with our long‑term strategy at a favourable point in the cycle.”
Nuveen's sale of the Can of Ham in the City to Hayfin for £335 million at the end of last year, alongside the completion of the sale of Fruit and Wool Exchange will add to gathering confidence that liquidity is returning strongly for £150 million plus offices in central London after a historically low number of transactions at this level in 2024.
CBRE, JLL and Norges declined to comment.