New research from Savills shows that Asian investors spent £3.39bn ($4.3.bn) on London skyscrapers in the first six months of this year, up £590m on the same period in 2016.

Savills examined transactions for City of London office buildings more than 20 storeys high and found close to 70% of deals so far this year involved Asian buyers.

The biggest deals were Hong Kong’s CK Asset buying 5 Broadgate from UK REIT British Land and GIC Private for £1bn, Singapore’s Ho Bee Land buying Ropemaker Place for £650m and South Korea’s Mirae Asset Management buying 20 Old Bailey for £341m.

Rasheed Hassan, head of cross border investment at Savills, says: “We continue to see a steady stream of new and existing investors from Asia seeking opportunities in London. In 2018 there has been notably more activity from South Korean investors and we can see this trend continuing, as we are seeing an increasing number of enquiries.

“Singaporean investors have also been more acquisitive, with a focus on scale, some investors are concentrating purely on portfolios while private investors are looking for larger single assets.

“Finally there continues to be much talk about a deluge of Japanese capital into London but this remains to be seen. Instead we believe Malaysian investors could be the ones to watch this year as some of the largest funds come under pressure to deploy capital into real estate.”

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Savills commercial research consultancy

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Rasheed Hassan