Largest office letting transaction in the history of Glasgow

Bonn, 20.08.2009

Rarely has the letting of an office building attracted more attention in a country than IVG’s “Broadway One” building in Glasgow that has now been let. In view of the banking crisis, it was virtually a sensation when Britain’s Chancellor Alistair Darling recently announced that “Tesco Personal Finance” (TPF), one of Great Britain’s most rapidly growing financial institutions, would open a new customer service centre and create 800 new jobs in Glasgow. The expansion programme of TPF – which will lead to the creation of 2,000 new, highly skilled jobs in the United Kingdom this year alone – is seen by the British and Scottish governments as an indication of the fact that the financial crisis has passed its peak. Andrew Higginson, Chief Executive of Tesco Retail Services, emphasised the extremely beneficial symbolic power of the settlement of a universal bank in the current business climate. Tesco Personal Finance, which was established in 1997 with its headquarters in Scotland’s Edinburgh, today is the largest financial supermarket in the United Kingdom.

The Customer Service Centre, which the Scottish government will support with a guarantee of more than £5 million, is expected to open by the middle of next year in IVG’s “Broadway One” building. TPF has rented the entire building with a usable floor space of approx. 12,000 square metres from IVG for a period of 20 years. It is the single largest letting transaction in the history of the City of Glasgow.

IVG had acquired the property in the city centre of Glasgow – just a few blocks away from Glasgow’s central railway station – in 2007 and completed “Broadway One” as the first construction phase in May this year, with a total investment of £51.5 million. The building has been given the highest environmental and energy efficiency rating (BREEAM: “very good”), and it is equipped with a highly efficient building management system, which will sustainably ensure the building’s quality for its users. IVG’s Managing Director David Gibson in London pointed out that the building has been fully let to one of the country’s financially strongest companies only a few months after its completion.

IVG Immobilien AG
IVG Immobilien AG is one of the major real estate companies in Europe. The company’s activities are focused on real estate and caverns. Via its network of local branches with approx. 700 employees in selected major German and European cities, IVG currently manages, inter alia, its own properties with a market value of € 6.1 billion, as well as specialised funds and mandates for institutional investors with a volume of € 12.0 billion and closed-end funds with a volume of € 3.3 billion. Overall, IVG manages assets worth more than € 22 billion.

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Jens Friedemann
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Fax +49 (0)228 844-338
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