Madison International Realty Ups Stake in Oslo Office Complex for $110M

By Keith Loria, Contributing Editor

Madison International Realty acquired an additional 59.5 percent interest in the Statoil office complex in Oslo, Norway, for $110 million.

Madison, which already owned a 35 percent interest in the Statoil office prior to the latest acquisition, acquired its original share in the building in 2012. The current deal was a combination of a 30 percent equity stake purchased from Koksa, a Norwegian PLC formerly known as IT Fornebu, and a 29.5 percent stake acquired from various individual investors.

“This is a really interesting transaction. We are very interested in Oslo, and at the top of the list as to why is the personal income and wealth creation going on because Norway as a country discovered oil,” Ron Dickerman, Madison International Realty’s president and founder, told Commercial Property Executive. “The state oil company is called Statoil and this is their headquarter building.”

Statoil ASA is 18 months into a 15-year lease in the 721,000-square-foot, nine-story Class A building, which was designed with them in mind.

“It’s very architecturally significant and was designed to make sure its headquarters made a statement,” Dickerman said. “It looks like a moon base or Lego-style structure.”

According to Dickerman, the company is in the process of acquiring the remaining shares of the building and will have a 100 percent interest before year’s end.

“Since our original investment, 18 months have gone by, and we’ve attended board meetings and gotten to know the other board members and the structure and over the course of several months, we have reached an agreement to buy out all the remaining equity in the building that we didn’t already own from those other shareholders,” he said. “By Norwegian law, once you get to 90 percent, you can effectively execute and squeeze a merger and buy out the remaining minority shareholders.”

The transaction was facilitated by legal counsel Line Ravlo-Losvik at Wikborg Rein and arranged by Arctic Securities ASA (Arctic). JLL & Akershus advised the buyer.

Earlier this week, Madison acquired a 50 percent share in an Oslo luxury retail center, and plans to continue to look for opportunities in the area.