Mumbai's iconic Express Towers gets new landlord for Rs 900 crore

Arijit Barman & Baiju Kalesh, ET Bureau | Nov 19, 2013, 10.13AM IST
MUMBAI: Express Towers, an iconic commercial building in South Mumbai's Nariman Point, is all set to get a new owner. Ending months of negotiations , bulge-bracket American PE fund Blackstone, together with one of its portfolio companies, Pune based developer Panchshil Realty, is buying out the current owners — the Indian Express Group and ICICI Venture , the PE arm of India's largest private sector lender — for Rs 900 crore, said multiple people involved in the ongoing negotiations. Blackstone's India headquarters is in the same building along with fellow PE companies Warburg and General Atlantic and consultant McKinsey. A formal announcement is expected soon, added the people mentioned above. Express Towers, with 25 levels of office space, was built by Ramnath Goenka, the legendary founder of Indian Express Limited, with the aim of building the tallest tower in South Asia - a record it did manage to achieve and hold on to for two years after it was built in 1972. 

Designed by renowned American architect and Indophile Joseph Allen Stein, this was also the first major building to be built on the reclaimed land of Nariman Point. The Blackstone-Panchshil combine is buying 3,84,000 sq feet of the total leasable area of around 400,000 sq ft. The deal excludes the top-floor penthouse of Indian Express chairman & managing director Vivek Goenka, restaurants owned by members of the Goenka family and Express Group offices. 

Vaidehi Thakar, director (legal), The Indian Express, directed queries from ET to ICICI Venture , which holds a 49% stake in Indian Express Newspapers (Mumbai) Ltd (IENL) that owns and manages Express Towers. Most of the remaining 51% stake is owned by Vivek Goenka while Shekhar Gupta, Editor-in-Chief of The Indian Express Group has a small economic interest. "I do not want to comment on it," Goenka said. He too directed the queries to ICICI Venture.