NEW YORK CITY-Gains in net income and funds from operations during the past year have Brookfield Office Properties feeling bullish about the year ahead. “Having achieved overall leasing activity of 6.9 million square feet in 2010, our second-highest annual leasing volume ever and 50% higher than 2009, we begin 2011 observing confidence returning to our primary office markets,” Ric Clark, president and CEO, says in a release announcing the company’s latest financial results. “With a strong balance sheet, top assets and solid platforms and people, we believe we are positioned well to grow in a recovering market.”

Net income for the 12 months ending Dec. 31 was $1.55 billion, compared to a loss of $220 million in ’09. Full-year FFO was $727 million, compared with $556 million for the year prior. For the fourth quarter of ’10, FFO was $216 million, compared with $208 million during the same period in ‘09. BOP said Friday that it’s projecting FFO in the range of $584 million to $609 million for this year.

On the leasing front, the REIT finished ’10 with Manhattan’s largest lease of the year, a 444,000-square-foot deal for Societe Generale at 245 Park Ave. Since the start of this year, BOP has renewed one of Bank of Montreal’s two 500,000-square-foot leases at First Canadian Place in Toronto, and signed OppenheimerFunds to a direct lease of 236,000 square feet at Two World Financial Center in Manhattan after its sublease from Bank of America expires in 2013.

It’s not yet clear what will happen to the 4.6 million square feet BofA/Merrill Lynch currently occupies at the eight-million-square-foot World Financial Center campus. Bloomberg reported Friday that the banking giant has yet to renew its leases, which expire in two years. BOP’s office portfolio in the US and Canada finished the year at 95% occupancy, down 10 basis points from Q3 ’10.

BOP is in the process of exiting the residential land business, via a planned merger in which its Carma Developers division would merge with Brookfield Homes. The new entity would be known as Brookfield Residential Properties Inc. A shareholder vote to approve the transaction is scheduled for March 15.