Swiss swoop on Swinburne Uni tower
Swiss fund manager Fidinam has swooped on a Melbourne office tower in a $40 million deal with Swinburne University, which was keen to bolster its finances by divesting real estate after the loss of international students.
The transaction, and the presence of an international investment house as the buyer, will inject another dose of confidence into the city’s commercial market as it recovers from three lockdowns over the past year.
The seven-storey building at 226-232 Flinders Lane, known as Invicta House, is in a prime position near what will become the Town Hall station as part of the Melbourne Metro Tunnel project.
Before the pandemic struck, the university had ambitious plans to transform Invicta House into a vertical CBD campus, adding to its main campus in Hawthorn and others in Croydon and Wantirna.
But those plans came tumbling down amid the abrupt downturn and the loss of revenue from international students across the tertiary sector. The property was back on the market as a vacant possession offering just a year after the university had acquired it for $44 million.
The decision to divest was part of a strategic review of its asset investment portfolio, the university said in July last year when it appointed Colliers International to broker the property. RMIT University followed a similar path, offloading a 14-storey CBD property for more than $120 million.
On the buy side, Fidinam has bought Invicta House on behalf of ST Australia Real Estate. It is the fifth CBD asset Fidinam has purchased for the Swiss investor and follows its acquisition of Swann House at 22 William Street for $52 million in late 2019.
“This being our second value-add purchase in the last 14 months in Melbourne, we remain positive on the medium-term outlook for the city,” Fidinam Australia managing director Matthew Burrows said. “It remains one of the top investment destinations nationally, if not globally, at present.”
Colliers International’s Daniel Wolman, Matthew Stagg and Oliver Hay handled the building, which has a distinctive art deco facade and close to 6500 sq m of space.
“The blank canvas opportunity sitting on a corner block in one of Melbourne’s most desired pockets saw interest from all types of buyers, which had the negotiations running deep into the New Year period,” Mr Wolman said.
The pace of transactions is steadily picking up in the Melbourne CBD, following the interruption of a snap five-day lockdown in mid-February.
Over the New Year break, a classic Collins Street office block, built in the 1930s and now home to the head office of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, sold for more than $40 million.
In another deal, residential developer Burbank sold its headquarters of almost two decades, a historic five-storey building at 100 Franklin Street, for nearly $30 million to developer Landream. Burbank had bought the building at auction in 2002 for $3.725 million.
