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Israeli Diamond Billionaire Buys Historic New York Times Building
From Ryan Chittum of the Wall Street Journal today:
Lev Leviev made his first billion dollars in the diamond mines of Russia and war-torn Angola. Now he's trying to buy up the crown jewels of Manhattan real estate.
The old and majestic Times Building in New York
Diamond Billionaire and Philanthropist, Lev Leviev.
Africa Israel USA, a unit of Africa Israel Investments Ltd. of which Mr. Leviev is chairman, paid $525 million to scoop up the landmark building that has served as the headquarters for New York Times Co. for the past 94 years.
Tishman Speyer, the closely held New York real-estate giant, purchased the building from the newspaper company in 2004 for $175 million. Because of the red-hot Manhattan real-estate market, Tishman was able to sell the building for triple what it paid the Times for it only three years ago.
Mr. Leviev's purchase of the Times building follows a deal in March when Africa Israel, in partnership with Mann Realty Associates, paid $430 million to purchase the Apthorp, one of Manhattan's most exclusive rental apartment buildings, which it plans to convert into condominiums. The renaissance-revival structure, built in the early 1900s, has been home to many celebrities, including Al Pacino, Nora Ephron and Conan O'Brien. The transaction's price means that the 160 apartments in the Apthorp, where rents run as high as $25,000 a month, are valued at about $2.4 million each.
Africa Israel was part of a partnership that spent $235 million to redevelop a complex that includes the former headquarters of J.P. Morgan, across from the New York Stock Exchange, into luxury condominiums. The partnership racked up more than $1 billion in sales, quadrupling their investment, according to a person familiar with the project.
Associates say the billionaires got another blockbuster New York real-estate deal in the works in the coming months.
Mr. Leviev is snatching up Manhattan real estate at a time when prices are smashing records. But from the perspective of an Israeli billionaire who grew up in Russia, made his fortune there and in Africa, and has business interests across the world, Manhattan is downright cheap. Mr. Leviev bought the Times building for about $681 a square foot, well below the average price of $844 a square foot for buildings sold in midtown Manhattan during the first quarter of this year.
New York Times building sold for $525 million.
"Mr. Leviev believes very much in the United States," says Rotem Rosen, chief executive of Africa Israel USA. "His strategy is to invest in the best places, and he believes that New York is very much undervalued" compared with cities of similar stature like London.
For the New York Times, struggling like other newspapers with a downturn in industry fortunes, the hundreds of millions of dollars that Tishman Speyer made in a short time would have gone a long way for a company facing shareholder protest. When the building was sold in 2004, though, $175 million was considered a good price. The Times constructed the building -- designed to look like a French chateau -- on West 43rd Street at the heart of Times Square in 1913.
But in the late 1990s the building was showing its age and needed a gut renovation. Instead, the newspaper company teamed up with Forest City Ratner to erect a Renzo Piano-designed, 1.6 million-square-foot skyscraper two blocks from its current home. The Times is now moving into the new building and will have vacated its old space by June, says a spokeswoman.
Mr. Leviev's company plans to do a total renovation of the 770,000 square-foot Times building that could cost more than $170 million. It plans to add retail space on the ground floors, but will keep the rest of the building as office space, though part could be converted to a hotel, said a person familiar with the transaction. At a time when rents in midtown are skyrocketing -- up 26% in the past year, according to Cushman & Wakefield Inc. -- tenants are scrambling to find space but there are few big blocks available and even fewer being built.
"You have a building that has fantastic bones," says Rob Speyer, senior managing director at Tishman Speyer. "It's got high ceiling heights, large windows and lots of light and air."
Mr. Leviev's business interests now span the globe, with shopping malls and apartment housing in Israel, 7-Elevens in the American Southwest, a swimwear company and steel mills.
Mr. Leviev immigrated to Israel from Russia when he was a teenager and made his fortune in the secretive diamond business, becoming perhaps the biggest rival to the De Beers diamond cartel. Since 2001, a company controlled by Mr. Leviev has held the marketing rights for Angolan diamonds, which some critics have said were used to finance African wars.
"That's totally false," a spokesman says. In February 2002, Mr. Leviev told Professional Jeweler magazine, "We are doing everything we can to stop the flow of conflict diamonds, and we are 100% confident none go through the legal Angolan channels. But we also know there may be loopholes where conflict diamonds are smuggled through Angola's borders in areas that are difficult to control."
Mr. Leviev first came to prominence when his Leviev Group, based in Tel Aviv, helped finance the Catoca diamond-mine project, a joint venture with the Angolan state-owned diamond producer Endiama and the Russian producer Almazy Rossii-Sakha. Although an Israeli citizen, Mr. Leviev retains connections in the former Soviet Union and has been linked in published reports to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Mr. Leviev secured a series of deals to market Angolan government diamond production, estimated at $1 billion, through a company called Ascorp. Leviev Group is also involved in mining diamonds in Namibia, as well as gem polishing in Israel and Russia.
Leviev Group reports annual revenue in excess of $2.5 billion and claims to be the largest source of diamonds outside De Beers. This week an initial public offering of the Russian holdings of Africa Israel Investments, now the third-largest publicly traded corporation in Israel, will price on the London Stock Exchange, Mr. Rosen says.
Mr. Leviev made his entrance into the U.S. real-estate market in 2001, forming a partnership with developer Shaya Boymelgreen, which has now ended. The two former partners have divided up their jointly held U.S. properties, with Mr. Leviev keeping the New York buildings and Mr. Boymelgreen holding on to Miami projects. Miami's real-estate market has been hammered by an oversupply of such condo projects. Mr. Boymelgreen declined to comment.
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