Hana Financial named preferred buyer of $700 mn Seattle office tower: report

A consortium of South Korea's Hana Alternative Asset Management Co. and other units of Hana Financial Group has signed a preliminary agreement to buy a 38-story office tower in downtown Seattle for around 800 billion won ($686 million), a Korean newspaper reported.

As the preferred buyer of the recently constructed Qualtrics Tower, Hana Financial will conduct due diligence on the site, the Maeil Business Newspaper said on Sept. 16, citing investment banking sources. Skanska AB, a Swiss-based multinational developer, owns the 61,780-square-meter property.

The South Korean financial group will sell down equity interests worth around 300 billion won to domestic institutional investors and borrow from US financial institutions to finance the deal.

Its equity investment is expected to generate a 7% annual return, based on the terms of an around 3-percentage point increase in annual rent.

US data company Qualtrics, which German software Group SAP acquired in 2018, is the anchor tenant, occupying 13 floors in the building, formerly known as 2+U. Other tenants include job search company Indeed.com., cloud storage provider Dropbox Inc. and co-working firm Spaces, under leases between 10 to over 15 years.

In December 2019, Hana Financial Investment Co., a brokerage firm and South Korea’s Hotel Lotte Co. acquired the hotel portion of F5 Tower, a 44-story building, in downtown Seattle for $175 million. KKR & Co. snapped up all the office space in the building last year.



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