Insignia/ESG vice chairman Michael Laginestra, executive managing director Scott Gottlieb and senior managing director Phillip Weiss represented Standard Chartered in the transaction, which closed on Thursday. Sublessor Credit Suisse First Boston was represented by Insignia executive managing director Lewis Miller, vice chairman Robert Alexander and consulting director Jason L. Gorman. Sources say Standard Chartered inked a deal in the low $40s for the entire third floor of the building. The firm will employ 400 staff at the new site.
According to Laginestra, the emerging markets bank began its search for a new North American headquarters the day after its approximately 90,000-sf space at 7 World Trade Center was destroyed on Sept. 11. "I got the call on Sept. 12," Laginestra tells GlobeSt.com.
Once the firm got its Jersey City disaster recovery center up and running with 300 employees and another 100 staff were set up in a Midtown office, an exhaustive headquarters search began. "We looked at everything," Laginestra notes. "We investigated all opportunities on the island of Manhattan. Downtown, Midtown and Midtown South. Dozens of opportunities. They were as thorough as anybody I've ever worked with in looking at every opportunity."
Also-rans included the McGraw-Hill building at 1221 Avenue of the Americas and the Ernst & Young headquarters building at 5 Times Square, owned by Boston Properties. But Laginestra adds that the firm also weighed carefully its decision to retain a Manhattan presence. "There was a question about how much they needed to be in Manhattan versus how much they needed to be in this part of the country and the world. This was the best fit. The large floorplate was a huge advantage."
According to Rory Hayden, Standard Chartered's head of corporate affairs, the Americas, when push came to shove, "it was crucial for us to come back to the city." Hayden tells GlobeSt.com that several factors put 1 Madison Ave. over the top. "Obviously we needed to have rent that was comparable to what we were paying at the World Trade Center. And we wanted to have everybody in one location. Transportation also had to be very convenient."
Hayden says the bank will occupy its new space "sometime in September or October, because we're taking raw space so it's going to be fitted out according to our specifications." Amenities will include a purpose-built treasury dealing room, she adds.
The 53-story 1 Madison Ave. building was completed in 1909 and comprises 1.3 million sf in a 12-story main building topped by a 41-floor tower. Building owner MetLife net-leased the entire asset to CSFB in January 2001 and then leased back 260,000 sf in the tower. MetLife had roughly 2,200 employees at the property until last June, when the firm relocated 1,000 staff to 27-01 Bridge Plaza North in Long Island City. CSFB occupied 1.4 million sf in 1 Madison Ave.'s main building until late last year.
In December, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey leased 100,000 sf on the building's seventh floor and will be leasing another 50,000 sf in the near future. Following the Standard Chartered lease, CSFB retains 933,000 sf and is looking to sublet another 100,000 to 150,000 sf. MetLife, CSFB, the PA and Standard Chartered are now the building's only office tenants.
Standard Chartered is the result of a 1969 merger between the Standard Bank of British South Africa and the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China. It employs 30,000 people in more than 500 offices in more than 50 countries in Asia Pacific, South Asia, the Middle East, the UK and the Americas.
The bank serves both consumer and wholesale banking customers. The consumer side provides credit cards, personal loans, mortgages and asset management services to individuals and medium-sized businesses. The wholesale bank serves multinational, regional and domestic corporate and institutional clients in trade finance, cash management, custody, lending, foreign exchange, interest rate management and debt capital markets.
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