Toronto’s Royal Bank Plaza agrees $916mln skyscraper takeover by Zara's Ortega

• Financial

Amancio Ortega, 85, the Spanish billionaire businessman and founder of Inditex fashion group and Inditex subsidiary Zara clothing and accessories, had cut a deal to purchase a Toronto skyscraper, Royal Bank Plaza, in a €800 million ($916.88 million) buyout deal, Ortega’s private office had unveiled on Friday.

Apart from being one of the tallest skyscrapers in Canada, Royal Bank Plaza houses the headquarter of the world’s tenth-largest economy’s biggest lender, Royal Bank of Canada. On top of that, following release of media toplines citing Ortega’s latest venture to cash in on a top-tier real estate skyscraper in Toronto, the family office of Inditex’s main stakeholder, Pontegadea, had confirmed the purchase of Royal Bank Plaza, widely cherished for a cascade of windows having had 24-karat gold coatings.

Inditex founder and former Chief Executive Amancio Ortega, long-hailed for his Inditex subsidiary Zara, has a net asset worth of $73.9 billion to-date. Nevertheless, earlier on Friday, Bloomberg News had reported the acquisition citing sources familiar with the takeover deal.

Inditex founder Ortega to purchase Toronto skyscraper in a €800mln deal

In point of fact, latest move from Ortega to bank on the Toronto skyscraper despite a mass-scale shift to online workspaces came forth nearly three months after the current owners of Royal Bank Plaza, Oxford Properties Group alongside Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, had hired RBC Capital to find out a potential divestment deal for the high-profile real estate asset back in September 2021.

Nevertheless, according to data from CBRE, amid mounting concerns that a transmutation to work-from-home trend could be a long haul, demands of office spaces in downtown Toronto remained strong with a 9.7 per cent vacancy rate compared to a national average of 15.7 per cent as of December 31, 2021.