Insolvency sale of Frankfurt office tower to test fragile German market

By Iain Withers and Tom Sims

LONDON/FRANKFURT (Reuters) -Administrators are seeking buyers for a skyscraper in Germany's financial capital of Frankfurt after its owner filed for insolvency last year, in a significant test for whether the country's punishing office property downturn has found a bottom.

The 186 m (610.24 ft) Trianon building - which currently houses part of Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank after its main tenant left last year - is now on the market with advisers mandated to handle the sale, Pluta, the law firm appointed to oversee the insolvency case, told Reuters.

The tower, described on its website as an "essential part of the Frankfurt skyline", last sold for 670 million euros ($784 million) in 2018.

Pluta declined to comment on an asking price but the tower is likely to fetch considerably less than in 2018, following the biggest downturn in the German office market for a generation.

The building also comes with around 370 million euros in debt, two people with knowledge of the matter said. Investors have speculated on how much the debt will be discounted, and how much would be needed to redevelop the tower to appeal to tenants, multiple people in the sector told Reuters.

ING is one of the creditor banks, a source said. ING declined to comment.

The sale is being closely watched by Germany's property sector, which as a whole has shown signs of recovery but remains in the grips of a deep office downturn, with buyers and sellers often still far apart in their price expectations.

"We have started the sales process to find an investor for the Trianon office tower. There is a lot of interest, which makes me confident about the investor process," said Stephan Laubereau, a lawyer with Pluta.

German asset manager Deka was a tenant for decades but vacated the building last year, while the Bundesbank has occupied it since 2015 as its 50-year old campus is renovated.

Germany's property boom, fuelled for years by low interest rates, cheap energy and a strong economy, ended when a post-pandemic inflation surge forced the European Central Bank to hike borrowing costs and the rise of work-from-home hammered office occupancy rates.

Real-estate financing dried up, projects stalled, major developers went bust, and some banks teetered.

The court-appointed insolvency manager Pluta last year blamed "liquidity difficulties" for the building owners'insolvency and said it was in talks with banks.

Pluta said it has mandated Mellum Capital to oversee a sales process. Mellum declined to comment.

($1 = 0.8544 euros)

(Reporting by Iain Withers in London and Tom Sims in Frankfurt; Editing by Tommy Reggiori Wilkes and Tomasz Janowski)