NH-Hana consortium buys $294 mn Amsterdam office for renovation

A consortium of NH Investment & Securities Co. Ltd. and Hana Financial Investment Co. Ltd. has acquired an office building in Amsterdam for 350 billion won ($294 million) with a plan to inject an additional capital to fund its extensive renovation.

The two South Korean brokerage firms put up 175 billion won each and split their ownership equally in EDGE Amsterdam West property development, according to sources with knowledge of the matter on May 29.

They bought the property from Dutch property developer EDGE Technologies on a forward-funded basis, said Warburg-HIH Invest Real Estate GmbH which advised the South Korean consortium on the acquisition.

The two Korean companies used a vehicle of Hana Alternative Asset Management Co. Ltd. for the transaction.

The office building, constructed in the 1970s, is located in Amsterdam’s growing submarket of Sloterdijk. It is currently undergoing a full redevelopment and design overhaul.

It has yet to be disclosed how much capital NH Investment and Hana Financial will put into the renovation.

Key tenants are Dutch pension fund manager APG and Alliander N.V., a gas and transmission grid operator. The property is nearly 80% occupied.

The main building is expected to have a leasable area of 47,700 square meters, once completed in early 2021 as scheduled.

Office availability in the Amsterdam region continued to decline in 2018 due to strong demand, but the leasing market in the region was less buoyant than the previous year, real estate consultancy Knight Frank said in a recent research report.

The previous real estate investments by South Koreans in the Netherlands include the Atrium office complex in Amsterdam for 500 million euros in 2017 and De Rotterdam for 400 million euros in 2016.

By Hyunil Lee

hiuneal@hankyung.com