On Tuesday 31 March, in a conference room in the midtown Manhattan offices of Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom, the bidding for the IM Pei-designed John Hancock Building in Boston was over in under 60 seconds. According to The Boston Globe, one lone bidder raised his hand: Jeffrey Gronning, an executive with Normandy Real Estate Partners. His winning offer: $20m (£13.4m), plus the assumption of $640m (£430m) in debt.
The 60-storey Hancock tower now belongs to an investment partnership between Normandy and Five Mile Partners, who got the landmark building for half of what it sold for two-and-a-half years earlier. The outcome came as little surprise to those in the room: Normandy and Five Mile have spent the past 18 months working towards this end, acquiring key pieces of debt on the property.
