Beauty giant CJ Olive Young to buy Seoul office building for $472 mn

CJ Olive Young Corp., South Korea’s top beauty store chain, has been given priority rights to buy an office building in Seoul for about 680 billion won ($472 million), beating other bidders including global real estate investor BentallGreenOak (BGO), investment banking industry sources said on Wednesday.

KB Asset Management, which put KDB Life Tower on the market, and managers of the sale – NAI Korea and Colliers Korea – selected CJ Olive Young as the preferred bidder for the building near Seoul Station, according to the sources.

Five bidders including CJ Olive Young and BGO participated in the tender that opened on Feb. 11.

CJ Olive Young is the front-runner as it leases about 40% of rental space in KDB Life Tower, completed in September 2013, with 30 above-ground floors and nine basement floors. The building is linked with Seoul Station through an underpass.

The office tower with a total floor area of 80,000 square meters has anchor tenants such as KDB Life Insurance Co. and foreign companies.

KB Asset Management bought the building for about 425 billion won in 2018.

KOREA INVESTMENT & SECURITIES TO BUY DOOSAN TOWER

Separately, Korea Investment & Securities Co. is set to buy Doosan Tower in Seoul’s central business district (CBD).

South Korean real estate investment firm Mastern Investment Management Co. picked the securities firm as the preferred bidder for the first major office building up for auction among commercial properties in the CBD this year, investment banking industry sources said on Tuesday.

Korea Investment & Securities was known to have made a low-900-billion-won proposal, falling short of an initially estimated value of 1 trillion won, according to the sources.

Doosan Tower is a 34-story building with seven underground floors, covering a land area of 9,410.7 square meters and a total floor area of 122,630.3 square meters.

Constructed in 1998, Doosan Tower has become a landmark building in the Dongdaemun fashion district. Currently, the building houses Doosan Group offices; Hyundai DF Co., Hyundai Department Store’s duty-free shop; and Doota Mall, a Doosan shopping mall.

Mastern bought the building for 800 billion won in 2020 from Doosan Group.

Write to Gyeong-Jin Min at min@hankyung.com
 
Jongwoo Cheon edited this article.