QATARISHARD“The best in London,

not owned by London”

MAY 2017

THEGHERKIN

CONTENTS

Creators Biography

Contents

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The Shard, also knows as the Shard of glass is staggeringly over 310 meters tall.

The Shard currently stands as Europes tallest building to date.

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95% of the construction materials are recycled and 20% of the steel-

work is from recycled sources.

The Shard is currently owned by two owners. 95% of it is owned by the Qatari state, the remaining 5% is owned by Seller property group

The shard is the 2nd tall-est building in Europe stand a full 306 m tall

and is one of the world’s most intricate designs with its 4 pronged distinguishable top, but this is to be expected by famous architect and designer of the shard Renzo Piano who is the architect of several other structures such as the KPN tower and parliament house.

The construction of the shard first started on the 16th of March 2009 and eventually finished on the 1st of February and opened to the public via tours and these tours are still available to this day.

In late 2007 there was a high level of uncertainty about the

construction and viability of the shard in the Global Fanat-ical Market (GFM) due to it becoming one of the largest buildings in the world and pro-duction plans were stopping, this all changed in January 2008 when it was announced that the shard had been given fanati-cal support by Qatari owners Qatari Diar Real Estate Invest-ment Company who original-ly gained a 80% stake in the project for £150 million pounds but later that was upped to 95% of the property for an undis-closed fee.

The shard is also co-owned by Stellar property and they own a 5% of the shard but is still a miniscule amount.

Qatari Diar Real Estate Invest-ment Company are a con-struction development project company that support the construction and development of 39 different structures across the world one of which was the shard and with a combined val-ue of over 35 billion dollars (27 billion pounds, in the current market) which puts them in the world top 50 richest countries according to ‘Forbes’.

The fact that the shard is owned by overseas have caused controversy in recent history as people feel that it invades the legitimacy and honesty of the shard and often refer to it as being owned by ‘the big cats’ which have divided opinion between the people of Britain

and the business world as these businesses feel they own the right to possess the shard as they have not played any eco-nomical tricks on the purchase and upkeep of the shard and have payed the correct amount of tax, on the other hand many British citizens feel that the tallest building within Lon-don should be owned by an organisation within the UK or by the government so that we don’t lose our ‘pride’ in terms of these companies taking over.

T he Gherkin’s birth starts in 1992 as an explosive by the

IRA was detonated which catastrophically injured the building. The building was then torn down, due to the damage and city officials decided to put a larger tower in its place. However the original design of the building raised fears that it could

negatively impact air traffic from Heathrow. Once the original design was some-what pushed away, Norman Foster created the scaled-down version that now sits at 30 St Mary Axe.The con-struction of the bullet like tower began in 2001 and the Gherkin was finished in December of 2003. Yet,

Joseph Safra the banking billionaire has expanded his empire in London. In the year 2013, Safra bought the Gherkin skyscraper for £700m.The Syria-born Brazilian is worth an esti-mated £10.7bn according to Forbes.

it didn’t open for the after 6months it was done.

In September 2006, the building was put up for sale with a price tag of £600 million. Possible buyers included British Land, Land Securities, Prudential, ING, and the Abu Dhabi royal family.

On the 21st February 2007, IVG Immobilien AG and UK in-vestment firm Evans Randall completed their joint purchase of the building for £630 million. Swiss Re booked a gain of more than £300 million from the sale. Since February 2010, Sky News has broadcast its flagship business pro-gramme, Jeff Randall Live, from a studio in the build-ing. In addition the top two floors of tower are now available on a private hire basis for events. Deloitte announced in April 2014 that the building was again being put up for sale, with an expected price of £550 million. The current owners could not afford to make loan repayments and general financing structure. In No-vember 2014, the Gherkin was purchased for £700 million by the Safra Group, controlled by the Brazilian billionaire Joseph Safra, who still owns it to date.

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The City of London’s tallest tower is to be sold to Chinese inves-tors after the joint owners of the “Cheesegrater” also known

as the leadenhall building exchanged contracts to sell it to China’s CC Land.British Land, which developed the tower in

a 50-50 joint venture with Canada’s Oxford Properties, said on Wednesday the building would be sold for £1.15bn.

The price for the all-cash deal is 26 per cent above the building’s most recent valuation of £915m last Sep-

tember. The 736-ft high, wedge-shaped skyscraper, whose formal name is the Leadenhall Building,

was completed in 2014.The purchase will be the largest so far by a Chinese investor of a UK

property .The deal must be approved by the shareholders of CC Land, which is controlled

by the western Chinese property magnate Cheung Chung-kiu.

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“The defining feature of The Leadenhall Building is its distinctive tapering shape”