Thursday, December 13, 2007

DBS Will Move Its HQ To Marina Bay In Largest Lease Ever

Source : TODAY, Thursday, December 13, 2007

DBS Group Holdings, South-east Asia’s largest bank, is moving its headquarters in Singapore to Marina Bay, with an office lease that it said is the largest in the city.

The bank will move its key office to the Marina Bay Financial Centre development, being built at the edge of the business district.

DBS will take about 700,000 sq ft of office space in 22 storeys in a 12-year lease starting 2012, it said yesterday in a statement.

“The new DBS headquarters will allow the bank to consolidate its various customer facing units, trading operations and its corporate headquarters into one building,” Mr Jackson Tai, the bank’s outgoing chief executive officer, said in the statement. It provides “certainty of our occupancy costs over the near term”, he added.

Marina Bay Financial Centre is a 2.6-million-sq-ft office and residential bayfront project developed by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing’s Cheung Kong Holdings, Hongkong Land Holdings and Singapore’s Keppel Land.

The site, in an area designated the “new downtown”, has attractions that include Las Vegas Sands’ US$4-billion ($5.8-billion) casino-resort.

Goldman Sachs Group, which owns the development that now houses DBS’ Singapore offices, is seeking buyers for the property, the Business Times reported, citing people it did not identify. Goldman is expecting $1.75 billion for the property, which it bought for $690 million in 2005, the newspaper said.

The statement from DBS also said it would move “various units” to a new nine-storey building at a business park in eastern Singapore.

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