Norway oil fund buys Paris property for $570m

by Agency Reporter

Norges Bank Investment Management bought an office and retail complex opposite Paris’s Le Madeleine church for €425.6m ($570m) from a fund managed by Blackrock Inc.

The 31,500 square-metre (339,000 square feet) Le Madeleine building, according to Bloomberg, has been completely refurbished since it was acquired by Blackrock Europe Property Fund III in 2009, the world’s largest money manager said in a statement today. Tenants include Chanel, Visa and C&A.

“The acquisition was made when there was little liquidity in the market, but we feel the building is now transformed,” Jean-Philippe Olgiati, a director at BlackRock Real Estate, said in the statement. The company is “assessing future opportunities to deploy capital in France and generate returns for our clients.”

Norway’s $890bn sovereign wealth fund, the world’s biggest, formed a real estate group last month that will invest almost $10bn annually over the next three years. The fund already owns properties on London’s Regent Street, Times Square in New York and the avenue des Champs-Elysees in Paris.