The Law Society of Hong Kong has bought an entire floor of offices in what was formerly the world’s most expensive tower at a 50 per cent discount, the latest among astute investors who are picking up property in the city at bargain prices.
Advertisement
The Law Society paid HK$345 million (US$44 million), or HK$14,000 per sq ft, for 24,980 sq ft (2,320 square metres) on the 26th floor of The Center from Gale Well Group. The property in the Central district was handed over to the Law Society on July 25, according to the Land Registry.
The purchase price was half of the HK$693 million that Gale Well paid in 2021, when its founder and CEO Jacinto Tong Man-leung bought the property from the late Ma Ah-muk. Ma, dubbed Hong Kong’s Minibus King, passed away in March last year.
The Law Society is still gathering views from its members for the design of the office floor and has not decided on the date for moving in, a member said.
The Center, a 73-storey office tower, was sold in 2018 for a record HK$40.2 billion (US$5.2 billion) by the city’s wealthiest man, Li Ka-shing, to a group of 10 local tycoons in what was then the world’s priciest property deal. Not long after the transaction, Hong Kong’s economy was driven into a slump by six months of anti-government protests and three years of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Advertisement
Fast forward to 2024, and several of The Centre’s buyers – including the Shenzhen-based developer Kaisa Group, the Shanghai developer Shimao Group and Ma’s family – had to put their prized asset on the market to cash out. The latest was Tong’s Gale Well, which had been trying to sell HK$3 billion of assets to prevent banks from calling on his loans. During a March interview with the Post, Tong said the three floors of The Center – for which he paid HK$2 billion between 2018 and 2021 – were “not for sale”.