Tour la Villette reaches 80% occupancy

Tour la Villette reaches 80% occupancy

. One of Paris tallest skyscrapers

. The building’s appeal for possible investors has increased.

. B2V and CPAM, two large semi-public administration entities in the welfare and health sector, are moving their offices to the building.

. Renta Corporación is carrying out the building’s transformation and modernization.

The international real estate group Renta Corporación has leased one third of the office building Tour la Villette to B2V, one of the leading French pension funds which will be moving its headquarters into the building. With this agreement, the aforementioned skyscraper will now have a rental occupancy of approximately 80%. Amongst other distinguishable tenants in the building is CPAM, Caisse Primaire d’Assurance Maladie de Paris, which also occupies an important area. According to Tania Bontemps, Renta Corporación’s Paris Managing Director, “beyond the physical transformation, one of the key elements in our business model is precisely the management of a high level of occupation, incorporating tenants with the highest solvency. This has a favourable impact on how the building is perceived and on its market value, therefore, increasing its investment appeal”. Further to this, Bontemps added, “our customers are looking for the best returns and we offer them optimized products that have excellent profitability over the medium and long term”.

Just as it has done recently with CPAM, Renta Corporación will provide B2V with a “ready for immediate occupation” project. This entity will occupy a total of 12 floors with a surface area of almost 14,000 square metres. This operation will allow B2V to combine all of its activities and its more than 600 employees, currently distributed in three different work centres, in one building. After having studied several alternatives and having taken into consideration the quality and location of the product, B2V decided to move to Tour la Villette because it was the most competitive offer.

Renta Corporación acquired the building in early 2007 and pursued an important repositioning project with its renovation and the improvement of its rental position, thereby converting it into the most attractive asset for investors. Renta Corporación designed and managed this transformation process, placing on the market a converted modern office building, leasing it to top grade tenants and thereby offering attractive and stable returns for the coming years. “Another advantage of Tour la Villette is that it is a very scarce product in Paris” Bontemps said, referring to the fact that “finding space today in the segment between 5,000 and 20,000 square metres has become a real problem for many companies. Renta Corporación has succeeded in detecting this market demand, to which we continue to provide a response”.

Tour la Villette is a 125 metre high skyscraper with a useful surface area of 40,000 square metres, distributed over its 35 floors, and additional two underground floors for car parking. The new building concept, located in an area with important development prospects in the very short term and with excellent transportation links, has awakened great interest in the market. CPAM and B2V have decided to locate their respective facilities in this building for maximum efficiency and optimization of their resources.

Paris, 14 February 2008.