PSE earmarks P1B share in new building in Bonifacio Global City
AFP FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines—The Philippine Stock Exchange has earmarked about P1 billion as prospective contribution for the construction of a grade “AAA” 23-story building that will become its unified headquarters in Bonifacio Global City by 2016.
“We’ll have a few floors for the exchange itself and the others will be sold to brokers,” PSE president Hans Sicat told reporters Thursday night.
As the whole building would cost around P3 billion to construct, Sicat said the PSE would likely shoulder about a third of it. Likewise part of the PSE’s contribution is the donated land that will house the building.
It was earlier reported that the PSE was given a parcel of the premium block One Bonifacio High Street (BHS) at the core of BGC’s future central business district under a revised deal with Ayala Land Inc. The office space was in exchange for the 2,000-square meter parcel of land originally donated to the PSE by the Fort Bonifacio developers as the site for its future headquarters more than a decade ago.
The PSE as well as the entire BHS development broke ground in BGC on Tuesday.
Top officials of ALI, now the controlling partner in the BGC development, said the upcoming office tower would have 29,000 square meters in leasable space, of which 19,900 sqm would be allocated to the PSE and its active brokers. The remainder will be leased out.
The unified trading floor will have about 2,000 sqm in space. The upcoming PSE headquarters would be similar to the IFC complex in Hong Kong.
The PSE was originally promised to have a new building in BGC by 2004, but the local bourse agreed to waive this after much haggling. ALI, which took over the Fort Bonifacio project from the Metro Pacific group in 2002, further deferred the construction of the future PSE headquarters given the previous slump in the high-end property market.
The stock exchange operates two trading floors—one at Tower One on Ayala Avenue in Makati City, and another at Tektite building in the Ortigas district. It has put up for sale its office property in Ortigas and centralized corporate headquarters in Makati.
Apart from the PSE headquarters, BHS—a one-kilometer urban and lifestyle destination—will likewise have a high-end shopping center, a six-star Shangri-La hotel and an iconic residential tower called “The Suites.”
