LONDON | 20 Fenchurch Street | 525 feet / 160.11 meters | 36 floors

[SkyscrapersOfNewYork]

Land Sec Looks To Walkie Talkie Partnership
Published on 06-09-2010 by Skyscrapernews.com

Land Securities is about to sign up the Canary Wharf Group as the partner in a joint venture to construct a new skyscraper in the City of London, 20 Fenchurch Street.

More commonly known as the Walkie Talkie thanks to the top-heavy look of the Rafael Vinoly design, the 160.11 metre tall building will have 36 floors above ground plus two basement levels and offer approximately 55,000 square metres of lettable space with the more lucrative floorplates at the top of the building being larger than those further down.

Songbird Estates, which owns 70% of the Canary Wharf Group, has received large amounts of foreign investment from outside the UK including the Qatari Investment Authority and the China Invesment Corporation, both of which are sovereign wealth funds. With this influx of money, the company has started to look outside its core estate whilst the increasing equity that these bodies own has improved the financial position of the developer.

There's also another lining for Canary Wharf in the form of construction contracts. The firm is a vertically integrated group and owns Canary Wharf Contractors who have built much of the Canary Wharf estate, so there are extra synergies to be exploited from skyscraper development for them.

In addition to this the China Investment Corporation is also considering buying a 25% share in the project from Land Securities, although whether this refers to half of Land Securities 50% that they will have or 25% of the half remains to be seen.

In any case, it shows the continuing trend in London of major foreign investors seeing the new generation of skyscrapers as prime assets to be developed speculatively, something that British investors have been famously unwilling to fund.

With the site having now been cleared by Keltbray, and a construction schedule of roughly three years, work should begin on the project in 2011 assuming everything gets signed and sealed.

http://www.skyscrapernews.com/news.php?ref=2635