SINGAPORE--Sovereign-wealth fund GIC Pte. Ltd. has sold the Bank
of America Merrill Lynch Financial Centre in London to Norway's
sovereign-wealth fund for GBP582.5 million ($944.5 million), in a
latest move by the Singapore fund to rebalance its portfolio to
focus on consumer and technology driven sectors.
Norges Bank Investment Management, will buy the 585,000 square
foot office building which is fully let to Bank of America Merrill
Lynch, which will continue to manage the property, Norges Bank and
GIC said in a statement.
The Singapore firm had bought Merrill Lynch's flagship City of
London office campus in 2007 for GBP480 million. GIC manages
Singapore's foreign-exchange reserves and says it oversees more
than $100 billion in assets, but analysts estimate the figure is
closer to $300 billion. As part of its rebalancing, the
sovereign-wealth fund, which said that it expects a challenging
investment environment over the next decade in developed markets,
has been focusing on consumer and technology related sectors.
Late last month, it bought a stake in U.K. roadside-assistance
provider RAC from Carlyle Group. People with knowledge of this deal
said that the deal valued RAC at GBP2 billion.
In August, the Singapore firm said it spent $104 million for an
undisclosed stake in Taiwan-based music-streaming service KKBOX,
and bought 18.5% of Brazilian education company Abril Educação S.A.
GIC was an investor in one of India's largest e-commerce companies,
Flipkart Internet Pvt., which raised $1 billion in new funding in
July to compete with the likes of Amazon.com Inc. and eBay Inc.
The Norwegian oil fund is the world's biggest sovereign fund,
and it was set up in the 1990s to act as the main investment
vehicle for Norway's vast oil wealth. It has expanded more than
tenfold in the past decade and is expected to be worth 7.278
trillion Norwegian kroner ($1.18 trillion) by 2020. It is managed
by Norges Bank Investment Management, an arm of Norway's central
bank.
Write to P.R. Venkat at venkat.pr@wsj.com
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