Another London acquisition

INDITEX founder Amancio Ortega paid £82 million (€93 million) for another London property in Foley Street, via his Pontegadea real estate company.

The 1920s building close to Oxford Circus and the British Museum, was originally built as a printer’s and later housed the BBC’s overseas service.

This was the Zara billionaire’s second impressive property deal in recent months, following the €100 million purchase last March of an apartment building in Dublin’s Hanover Square.

The Foley Street building was bought from Abrdn ­ formerly Standard Life Aberdeen ­ in a transaction overseen by property advisers Savills.

Abrdn bought the 4,000­square metre Foley Street building for £70 million (€79.5 million) in 2017, leasing it for 25 years to the Kier Group in 2018.

Undeterred by Brexit, Ortega continues to invest in the London property market with assets worth approximately €3 billion. His biggest purchase, The Post Building, was acquired in 2019 for around €700 million.

He owns properties in Oxford Street, St James’s Street and St James

US investment fund, Apollo Global Management, has the John Wood Group in its sights.

Usually referred to as Wood, the multinational engineering and consulting business headquartered in Aberdeen turned down four previous offers, maintaining that they did not reflect its real value.

Matters changed with

Square as well as Devonshire House, the former townhouse of the Dukes of Devonshire in Piccadilly.

The Foley Street sale was one of London’s few largescale property transactions in recent months, after sales slowed owing to the Bank of England's increased interest increase.