Singapore GIC Selling London's Bank of America Merrill Lynch Financial Centre

By P.R. Venkat 

SINGAPORE--Sovereign-wealth fund GIC Pte. Ltd. has sold the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Financial Centre in London to Norway's sovereign-wealth fund for GBP582.5 million ($944.5 million), in a latest move by the Singapore fund to rebalance its portfolio to focus on consumer and technology driven sectors.

Norges Bank Investment Management, will buy the 585,000 square foot office building which is fully let to Bank of America Merrill Lynch, which will continue to manage the property, Norges Bank and GIC said in a statement.

The Singapore firm had bought Merrill Lynch's flagship City of London office campus in 2007 for GBP480 million. GIC manages Singapore's foreign-exchange reserves and says it oversees more than $100 billion in assets, but analysts estimate the figure is closer to $300 billion. As part of its rebalancing, the sovereign-wealth fund, which said that it expects a challenging investment environment over the next decade in developed markets, has been focusing on consumer and technology related sectors.

Late last month, it bought a stake in U.K. roadside-assistance provider RAC from Carlyle Group. People with knowledge of this deal said that the deal valued RAC at GBP2 billion.

In August, the Singapore firm said it spent $104 million for an undisclosed stake in Taiwan-based music-streaming service KKBOX, and bought 18.5% of Brazilian education company Abril Educação S.A. GIC was an investor in one of India's largest e-commerce companies, Flipkart Internet Pvt., which raised $1 billion in new funding in July to compete with the likes of Amazon.com Inc. and eBay Inc.

The Norwegian oil fund is the world's biggest sovereign fund, and it was set up in the 1990s to act as the main investment vehicle for Norway's vast oil wealth. It has expanded more than tenfold in the past decade and is expected to be worth 7.278 trillion Norwegian kroner ($1.18 trillion) by 2020. It is managed by Norges Bank Investment Management, an arm of Norway's central bank.

Write to P.R. Venkat at [e-mail]

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