News | Real Estate

Wednesday 20th September 2006

Corporate and commercial law firm SJ Berwin's real estate department has advised The Crown Estate on the sale of Hobhouse Court in St James's, central London for £34.5 million. This is the latest deal as part of The Crown Estate's strategy of rebalancing its offices portfolio and disposing of non-core offices in central London.

Hobhouse Court is a mixed-use site of 12 buildings (of approx 90,000 sq ft) comprising offices, retail, educational institutions and residential.

The SJ Berwin team was led by real estate partner Jon Vivian, assisted by associates Rupert Dowdell and Jeanette Chalmers.  Merter Hilmi of Jeffrey Green Russell advised the purchaser Hobhouse (CSE) Ltd.

• On 1 June 2005 SJ Berwin LLP, an English limited liability partnership, took over the business of the SJ Berwin general partnership.  SJ Berwin LLP or an affiliated undertaking has an office in Berlin, Brussels, Frankfurt, London, Madrid, Milan, Munich and Paris.
  
  
• SJ Berwin LLP was named 'UK Firm of the Year' at the 2005 Legal Week Awards.  The award recognised SJ Berwin’s five years of international expansion and its involvement in a series of high quality deals.
  
  
• SJ Berwin's Real Estate Division totals 118 staff of which 21 are partners in London and 50 associates, encompassing the disciplines of Commercial Real Estate, Construction, Planning & Environment, Property Litigation and Real Estate Funds.  In addition, there are 3 dedicated real estate tax partners and 1 dedicated real estate partner in Paris.  There is an increasing emphasis on cross firm activity with related areas of Banking and Corporate and with the international offices.  The division acts for blue chip clients including British Land, Royal Bank of Scotland, the Hilton Group, Brixton plc, AXA, The Crown Estate, Marks & Spencer and Gazeley.
  
  
• The Real Estate Team is Legal Business Real Estate Team of the Year 2005.  It was also named "Real Estate Team of the Year" in the Lawyer Magazine Awards 2004, following its advice on the RBS/Canary Wharf transaction the highest-value property investment transaction in the UK in 2004.
  
  
• Revenue from Real Estate represents approximately 21% of the firm's total revenue in London.