Office sale nets £60m for Hammerson

Hammerson took its latest step out of the London office market yesterday as it rang up another £200m sale in the Square Mile.

The property group is focusing its business on retail assets, and sold £518m in offices to the Canadian developer Brookfield earlier this year.

It will gain another £60m from the sale of 10 Gresham Street, a building in which Hammerson owned a 30 per cent stake and which is mainly occupied by Lloyds Banking Group.

Hammerson, which bought Gresham Street in August 2010 for £175m in a joint venture with Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, is selling it on to KWAP, the Malaysian state pension fund.

The building generates £3m a year in rent.

The deal leaves Hammerson with just one more office building left to sell in the capital, Stockley House in Victoria, although its own City headquarters is not up for sale.

The company has been using the cash to bolster its retail business after pumping another £100m into the designer outlet developer Value Retail in the summer.