DBS To Move To Swanky New 700,000 Sq Ft Home

Source : The Business Times, December 13, 2007

It will be anchor tenant at MBFC Tower 3, S'pore's biggest commercial building

DBS Group will move its headquarters to the new and swanky Marina Bay Financial Centre (MBFC) Tower 3 in 2012.

At a media briefing yesterday, chief executive Jackson Tai said the group will occupy 22 floors spanning 700,000 square feet of the 48-storey MBFC Tower 3, which is expected to be completed in late 2011.

DBS's announcement confirms earlier reports in BT that it was eyeing a deal with MBFC.

The deal - a 12-year lease from 2012 with options to renew - is the largest lease transaction here so far, and will see the bank's headquarters, its trading, treasury and capital markets operations, and its 'customer-facing' business units housed in the MBFC, Mr Tai said. Neither DBS nor MBFC would say how much the bank will pay in rent.

The transaction was brokered by property consultants Jones Lang LaSalle, which also helped seal a similar leasing deal between Standard Chartered Bank and MBFC earlier this year.

'We want our headquarter building to continue to be located prominently in a modern facility at the heart of Singapore's financial district,' said Mr Tai.

The move is part of a broader plan that will see the bank relocate various 'core support functions' to a nine-storey building at Changi Business Park near the Expo MRT station in 2010.

The Changi site has a permissible gross floor area of some 500,000 sq ft and will be built in phases, he said.

Two months ago in Hong Kong, the bank also signed a lease for over 220,000 sq ft of office space at One Island East. DBS Hong Kong will be the anchor tenant in the 70-storey building when it moves in early next year.

In Singapore, the bank currently occupies a total of 1.05 million sq ft of office space. This comprises some 600,000 sq ft in its main DBS Towers 1 and 2 at Shenton Way, as well as other locations for back-office functions such as at Technopark @ Chai Chee in Bedok. It also occupies some 90,000 sq ft at The Comtech building within the Alexandra Distripark complex, which houses supporting operations such as account services. The bank sold both its Shenton Way office towers to a Goldman Sachs fund in late 2005 for $690 million or $789 per sq ft of net lettable area.

Goldman Sachs is now said to be in the process of selling the asset. Market watchers believe the top bids it would have attracted for the property would be in the region of $1,800- $1,900 psf.

MBFC general manager David Martin said DBS is the financial centre's sixth and largest tenant to date.

'Their tenancy brings the development as a whole close to 50 per cent let,' he said. With 1.3 million sq ft of office space, the MBFC Tower 3 will be the largest commercial building in Singapore when it is completed. Its floor plates range from 30,000 to 50,000 sq ft in size and the tower will include two large trading floors.

The entire MBFC project comprises 4.7 million sq ft of office space and sits on a 3.55 hectare site at the Marina Bay waterfront. It is jointly developed by Keppel Land, Hongkong Land and Cheung Kong (Holdings) Ltd.

DBS said it is likely to occupy some 1.3 million sq ft of space here in 2012, based on its current plans and the additional space at MBFC and Changi Business Park.