Having paid about €84 million in 2020 to acquire La Touche House in the IFSC, Axa Investment Managers and BCP Capital have formally instructed agent CBRE to find a buyer for the property. The guide price on this occasion is understood to be €25 million. Should a sale proceed at that level, the French-headquartered investor and its local partner would face a loss of at least €59 million on their original investment. The €25 million price tag represents a 70 per cent discount on the amount paid five years ago by Axa IM Real Assets and BCP to secure ownership of the property.
Developed in the early 1990s as one of the first buildings in Dublin’s then fledgling financial services district, the 8,547sq m (92,000sq ft) office block had commanded a valuation at its peak of some €100 million in 2007. In 2013, in the wake of the global financial crisis, it was sold by a group of private investors that had been assembled by Warren Private to a fund controlled by Credit Suisse for €35 million. Three years later, and with Ireland’s economic recovery firmly under way, the building’s Luxembourg-based owner accorded it a value of €70 million. Credit Suisse put the property on the market for €95 million in 2019 and secured its sale to Axa IM Real Assets and BCP for €84 million at the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic in February 2020. The acquisition of the building was backed by a debt facility provided by Bank of Ireland.
La Touche House is named after the Irish banking family synonymous with the founding of the Bank of Ireland, and the bank acquired the property in shell condition for its own use for €38 million in 1993. It sold the building to the aforementioned private investors assembled by Warren Private for €82.5 million in 2002, or just €1.5 million less than its 2020 sale price.
In an indication of just how much the demand for office space in the IFSC has shifted in recent years to newer and more sustainable buildings in the city’s north docklands, the value attributed to La Touche House has now dropped to a mere fraction of its historic levels. The price achieved for the property on this occasion will be seen as a barometer of the market for older office stock both in the IFSC and across the capital.
Axa and BCP had originally intended to attract new occupiers to La Touche House through the delivery of a €50 million redevelopment and upgrade of its sustainability rating.
The plan, had it gone ahead, was to have seen La Touche House increase in height from its existing seven storeys to 10. The building was also to have been refitted using “passivhaus” standards, which can cut energy bills by up to 90 per cent and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
