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Bridget

Posted: Nov 3 2009, 03:57 PM

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QUOTE

U.S. Embassy Building in London Sold to Qatari Diar (Update2)

By Chris Bourke

Nov. 3 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. embassy building in London will be bought by part of Qatar�s sovereign wealth fund and its staff will vacate Grosvenor Square after more than 70 years.

Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Co. agreed to purchase the Chancery building, the embassy said in a statement today. The proceeds will fund the construction of a new embassy building in the Nine Elms area of London�s Wandsworth district, south of the River Thames, which will start by 2013.

Diar will secure the remaining 945 years on the Mayfair district building�s lease. The property, which occupies the entire west side of the square, has 225,000 square feet (21,000 square meters) of space on nine floors and holds about 750 staff. The U.S. government will stay there until the relocation is completed in 2016 or 2017, according to the statement.

�The whole exercise is cost-neutral,� said William Jackson, head of central London development at Cushman & Wakefield Inc., which handled the sale. He declined to say how much Lusal, Qatar-based Diar paid for the building.

The embassy has been in Grosvenor Square since 1938, though its links date to 1785, when John Adams, who served as the first U.S. ambassador to Britain before becoming the second American president, lived in the neighborhood. The property was put up for sale a year ago, Cushman & Wakefield said.

Rent: One Peppercorn

The Eero Saarinen-designed embassy was built in 1960 and is leased to the U.S. by Grosvenor Group Ltd., a real-estate company belonging to the Duke of Westminster. It�s the only U.S. embassy in the world that the government doesn�t own. The annual rent is one peppercorn, Cushman & Wakefield said when the sale was announced in October 2008.

The new building will have more space and better security, Jackson said. It will be near the headquarters of Britain�s MI6 security service as well as the iconic Battersea Power Station, which has featured in films and Pink Floyd�s 1977 �Animals� album cover and has been subject to a series of failed development plans.

Diar, chaired by Qatar Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad Bin Jasim Bin Jaber Al-Thani, has invested $60 billion in projects in more than 18 countries including Morocco, Oman, Egypt, Syria, the Seychelles and the U.K. The company has a stake in the project to build the Shard in London, which will be Western Europe�s largest skyscraper.

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