Taken through its Pontegadea holding, this is, so far, the largest real estate acquisition made by the founder of Inditex, even exceeding the 700 million that he paid for a London building at the end of 2019. In addition, it is among the largest real estate purchases since the burst of the pandemic.
The office complex, known as the "gold building" because its windows have this element in their composition, is located in the heart of Toronto's financial district and is the headquarters of the Royal Bank of Canada, the country's main bank. . It is a complex built at the end of the 70s, and is made up of two skyscrapers, the tallest 180 meters high and 40 floors.
According to Bloomberg, Pontegadea has acquired this asset from two Canadian pension funds: Ontario municipal employees and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, which put the building up for sale a year ago.
Ortega's family office, which invests part of the dividends it receives from the textile company in the real estate sector, had already set up a pike in Canada a few years ago. In 2016 he acquired a commercial building in Montreal for about 29 million euros, and in 2014 he had already acquired another property in Toronto.
Ortega's real estate portfolio was valued at 14,075 million euros at the end of 2020, a figure 7.2% lower than the previous year, due to the pandemic and the currency effect of the devaluation of the pound and the dollar. In 2019 he surpassed his own record by reaching 15,163 million and exceeding the 15,000 million barrier in valuation.
It was that year when he undertook his last major purchase, that of the skyscraper The Post Building, which houses the McKinsey headquarters in the British capital and for which he paid 700 million euros. Last summer he acquired Cinven's London headquarters for $ 220 million.
Other large purchases in Pontegadea's history are those of the Troy Block and Arbor Bocks business complexes in Seattle (USA). The first, occupied by Amazon, required an investment of 665 million euros while for the second, where he is home to Facebook, he paid slightly less than 400 million.