Pension trust pays €20m for IFSC offices

The Irish Pension Unit Trust (IPUT) is to pay about €20 million for a modern office building in Dublin's International Financial Services Centre which fell sharply in value after it was bought by a group of investors including Seán FitzPatrick, the former Anglo Irish Bank chairman. [This article was amended on Thursday 21/11/13]

The investment syndicate originally paid €37 million for the 1999-built block at 6 George's Dock with finance provided by Bank of Ireland. Earlier this year the bank appointed receiver Tom Kavanagh of Kavanaghfennell Partners to initiate the sale of the partially-occupied building.

IPUT has been one of the most active Irish funds this year, recently selling a badly located office building in the south inner city and buying the Grade A six-storey headquarters of legal firm A&L Goodbody in the north docklands for €57 million.

More than 60 per cent of IPUT’s portfolio is now concentrated on modern office holding in the city.

Adrian Truick of Knight Frank is handling the sale of the George's Dock building which is currently producing rents of €914,000 from five international tenants. In addition, there are two floors available to let and once tenants have been found, the overall rent roll is likely to rise to about €1.4 million. Fully let, the yield will be around 8.7 per cent compared to 5.6 per cent at present. Because all five lettings date from earlier this year when rents were on the floor, the overall rental base is particularly low, averaging only €263 per sq m (€24.50 per sq ft). Most recent lettings in modern office building in the city are at or above €323 per sq m (€30 per sq ft). Even a previous tenant, Statoil, was paying more than the current rent until its lease ran out towards the end of last year.

The largest occupier, Corvil, is a major provider of application and network latency management solutions to various global financial markets. The company occupies 902sq m (9,711sq ft) and accounts for a high proportion of the rental income – €265,347. The lease runs until 2023 but includes a break option in 2006.

The fourth floor extending to 813sq m (8,756sq ft) is rented by Interactive Data, another supplier of financial information, for €233,304.

Airbus Financial Services pays a rent of €206,560 for the fifth floor under a lease which runs until 2023 but has a break option in 2018. The company manages a $5 billion fleet of Airbus A321 aircraft.

The ground floor is shared by Eurocopter International Services which operates a helicopter technical support centre, and Belfius Bank, a Belgian bank and assurance group.