AIG’s Wall St. Tower Trades for $46M

NEW YORK CITY-Beijing-based SouFun Holdings Ltd. said late last week it is acquiring 72 Wall St., one of a pair of adjoining AIG properties purchased last year by Youngwoo & Associates and Kumho Bank. The Internet portal company will pay approximately $46 million for the 250,000-square-foot office property and says it expects to close the deal in the first half of 2011.

SouFun plans to use the former AIG Training Center as its own global training center to train its expanding management, staff and clients, in conjunction with selected universities and colleges in the US, according to a release. “We believe that providing training to our management staff and our clients will bring us long-term return,” says SouFun executive chairman Vincent Mo in the release.

Mo adds that the Manhattan training facility “located at the center of the world economy” will provide “an attractive and unique value proposition to our management staff and clients. It will become an important part of SouFun’s internal training program called SouFun Management School which has trained most of SouFun’s managers and executives and has played a critical role in the past. Training our management staff and clients will continue to be one of SouFun’s main operational focuses into the future.”

Locally based Youngwood and Korea-based Kumho paid $150 million in 2009 to acquire 72 Wall and its considerably larger twin, 70 Pine St. Youngwoo has announced plans to convert much of 70 Pine, formerly AIG’s world headquarters, into high-end condominiums; the lower floors will be given over to office space.

GlobeSt.com reported in August that Deutsche Bank had scrapped plans to purchase 72 Wall for $60 million. The bank intended to use the circa-1925 building for expansion of its trading floors. Brokers from CB Richard Ellis, which marketed the property on behalf of Youngwoo and Kumho, were not available Monday for comment on the SouFun deal.