Billionaire Harry Stamoulis sizes up Collins Street tower
Billionaire investor Harry Stamoulis is sizing up an office tower on Melbourne’s Collins Street for a $200 million deal that would boost his growing portfolio of CBD buildings.
Stamoulis is in due diligence on the 25-storey tower at 357 Collins Street, put on the market by powerful Singaporean investment platform Frasers, through one of its property trusts.
If completed as expected, the deal will be struck at around book value, although at a materially lower price than the $222.5 million Frasers paid for it a decade ago.
The transaction is under consideration on a yield of around 7.5 per cent, compared to the 5 per cent yield the Collins Street tower would have held at its peak value.
That is another indicator of Melbourne’s soft office market, where the official vacancy rate is running at 18 per cent, the highest CBD rate in the country.
But the down cycle has also created an opening for cashed-up private players such as Stamoulis, whose family ranks 143rd with a fortune of $1.1 billion in the Financial Review Rich List.
The Collins Street deal is being brokered by Cushman & Wakefield’s Leigh Melbourne and Nick Rathgeber. Paul Henley’s OneEast Capital has advised Stamoulis, including on its $155 million acquisition two years ago of another Melbourne office tower, the home of explosives manufacturer Orica and the country’s first skyscraper.
The Rich Lister family also owns One Collins Street, bought in 2016 for $125 million. The late Spiros Stamoulis sold his Gold Medal soft drink brand to Cadbury Schweppes in 2004, creating a family fortune which has been channelled into a commercial real estate portfolio.
Son Harry Stamoulis owns one of Melbourne’s most expensive homes on one of its best streets, after building a new mansion on Toorak’s St Georges Road.
