By Ian McConnell
TWO Scottish office buildings have changed hands in deals totalling nearly £44 million.
The Cuprum building in Glasgow and The Stamp Office in Edinburgh have been acquired by a joint venture between TREOS, the discretionary fund vehicle of Trinova Real Estate, and Swedish investor Europi Property Group.
The price for Cuprum was £28.25 million, with £15.333m paid for The Stamp Office.
Cuprum was built in 2010. It has 96,267 sq ft of Grade A space over eight floors, and 37 car parking spaces.
READ MORE: Ian McConnell:Brexit could have taken many forms. Cheshire Cat Boris Johnson chose this one
The office building, in Argyle Street on the western edge of Glasgow’s international financial services district, is fully occupied, with key tenants including AXA Insurance (UK) and Teleperformance. It is also home to SAS Software and Citres.
The A-listed Stamp Office was built originally in 1819. The seven-storey Georgian building offers 52,177 sq ft of space. Four floors are situated above Waterloo Place. Three lower floors overlook Calton Road to the rear.
READ MORE: Ian McConnell: Paris metro poster for slapstick British farce evokes Brexit metaphor
The building has been redeveloped behind a retained facade to provide Grade-A, open-plan office accommodation.
It is 85%-occupied and tenants include the Scottish Legal Complaints Commission, The Scottish Ministers, Covance, Queryclick and Senvion.
Colin Finlayson, director of real estate advisory firm Lismore, advised Credit Suisse on the sale of Cuprum and a UK institutional owner on the disposal of The Stamp Office.
He said: “We are seeing increased activity in the Scottish market, with investors like Trinova and Europi being drawn by renewed occupier activity, attractive yields and favourable exchange rates, along with the potential to add value.
“Cuprum attracted significant interest from both overseas and UK investors. It offers excellent tenant covenants and secure income. The Stamp Office offers an opportunity to reposition a quality office building adjacent to the St James Quarter.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here