ING Finances 550 Madison Buy with $570M Loan

ING Capital, a part of ING Group, a global financial institution of Dutch origin, announced that it had originated a $570 million loan for the purchase of 550 Madison Avenue in New York City. In a deal that was first reported in April, investor Joseph Chetrit and his partners at Clipper Capital were in contract with Saudi Arabia's Olayan Group to sell the tower at 550 Madison Ave. for between $1.4 billion and $1.5 billion. The Olayan Group closed on its $1.4 billion acquisition of the property this month with the $570 million bridge loan from ING. Chetrit originally bought the building in 2013 for $1.1 billion with the intention of turning its upper-floor office space into luxury condos, but the plan never took shape. Morrison & Foerster's real estate group provided legal counsel to ING on the financing, while Shearman & Sterling represented Olayan America.

The 37-story building in the Plaza District of Manhattan, formerly known as the Sony Building (before the electronics giant vacated earlier this year) and originally the AT&T Building, has 852,830 square feet of rentable mixed-use space, including about 776,000 square feet of office space. With one restaurant tenant holding 5,000 square feet, the property was virtually vacant at the time of sale, which allows the new ownership an opportunity to rebrand and reconfigure the existing space. "The property has been maintained to a high standard and has never previously been available to the open market for office leasing," said Tony Fusco, head of Real Estate at Olayan America.

550 Madison Avenue was designed by architect Philip Johnson and partner John Burgee and was completed in 1984. The building stood in stark contrast to the boxy glass-and-metal towers that had sprung up in Midtown Manhattan since the 1950s featuring a number of ornamental flourishes, from its granite cladding and "Chippendale" roof line to its brass and marble finishes on the interior.

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