Amancio Ortega is testing the purchase of a former BBC headquarters in London for almost 90 million

The investment activity of Amancio Ortega in the United Kingdom does not stop. Pontegadea, the group that manages the equity investments of the founder of Inditex (Zara, Massimo Dutti, Bershka…) and the richest man in Spain, is negotiating the purchase of a new office building in London, as revealed on Wednesday by the specialized website CoStar News. This, citing market sources, indicates that the operation would be around 80 million pounds (89.7 million euros, at current exchange rates). The building, originally a printing press built in the twenties, is close to the BBC headquarters and, in fact, for years served as offices for the commercial division of British public broadcasting.

The property, renovated in 2015 by the construction company Kier and the firm Brimelow McSweeney Architects, currently houses a business of coworking (flexible office rental). Of the more than 3,000 meters built, 2,100 are available for rent, according to the building’s commercial brochure. Some websites advertise their tables for a price that exceeds 840 euros per table per month. It offers, in addition to parking for bicycles or changing rooms, a kitchen, private offices, meeting rooms or terraces on the upper floor (the fifth) and on the roof. To this we must add a privileged location in the center of the British capital, in the Fitzrovia neighborhood. The building is close to Soho, the British Museum and Regent’s Park.

Pontegadea has declined to comment on the operation. This would not be, by far, the first of Ortega’s heritage firm in London, which is —along with Madrid— the city in the world with the most buildings. In fact, in 2019 it undertook one of the largest purchases in its history, paying more than 700 million at the time for The Post, another office building in central London. Pontegadea UK, the subsidiary that the group created in the aftermath of Brexit to manage its British real estate portfolio, owned properties for more than 3,000 million in 2021. It would later add new assets, such as the largest office building in Scotland, the purchase of which it announced less than one year old

As a whole, Pontegadea is the largest Spanish property management firm. The more than 15,000 million that its buildings are worth, according to the latest results presented in the commercial registry (referring to the 2021 financial year), place it above the socimis Colonial and Merlin, both listed on the Ibex 35. Although the nature of the firm It is very different: the group draws on the income of Amancio Ortega (mainly the dividends he receives as Inditex’s largest shareholder) and reinvests them in real estate, but also in industrial holdings, mainly focused on the telecommunications and energy sectors. Although the buildings in Pontegadea are spread over nine countries, Spain, the US and the UK account for the vast majority.

In Spain, however, Pontegadea has reported few real estate investments in recent years. At a recent conference in Madrid, the company’s top executive, Roberto Cibeira, pointed out that the price rebalancing moment in the market could change that shortly. So far, the latest acquisitions made by the company have focused on the US, where it has acquired two luxury residential skyscrapers (one in Seattle and the other in New York), and where it bought a joint portfolio of seven logistics assets in a operation that exceeded 900 million dollars, the largest disbursement it has ever made.

Follow all the information of Economy and Business in Facebook and Twitteror in our weekly newsletter