Narrative
Full Description
Project narrative
In January 2014, the Bank of China (BOC) issued a loan to China Investment Corporation (CIC) — a Chinese state-owned sovereign wealth fund — to finance its acquisition of Chiswick Park business park from Blackstone Group for approximately £780 million GBP. Chiswick Park is an 33-acre six-building campus-style business office park (with a seven building under construction) located in West London, W4, in England that served as the Britain and European headquarters for over 20 companies including Paramount Pictures, Discovery Channel, and Tullow Oil; it had 116,000 square meters of space built. In November 2013, CIC was in active discussions with the Blackstone Group L.P. to purchase Chiswick Park for £780 million GBP (€940 million EUR). An agreement was finalized in 2013. The acquisition did not include the under-construction Building 7, which was retained by Blackstone; Blackstone would also remained as asset manager for the entire park for CIC. The acquisition was completed on January 7, 2014.
Staff comments
1. The face value of the Bank of China loan is unknown. However, given that the total estimated cost of the acquisition was £780 million GBP and most M&A loans cover at least 70% of the total cost of the acquisition, AidData assumes for the time being that the face value of the Bank loan was roughly equivalent to £546 million GBP. This issue warrants further investigation.