Home Savings Tower Sold to Partnership

The Home Savings of America tower in downtown Los Angeles has been sold to a partnership of U.S. investment banker Yukuo Takenaka and Japan’s Kawasaki Enterprises, it was announced Thursday.

Although the purchase price was not disclosed, sources close to the deal said the amount was $80 million to $100 million for the 24-story, 260,000-square-foot building, at 7th and Figueroa streets.

H. F. Ahmanson & Co., parent of Home Savings of America, the country’s largest thrift, said it sold the building as part of its effort to meet tougher federal capital standards for savings and loans. H. F. Ahmanson said it intends to keep its headquarters in the building.

The sale price is relatively small by the standards of downtown Los Angeles, which has seen foreign investors pay more than $600 million for its trophy office buildings in the past four years.

So many office buildings have changed hands that as much as 45% of the office space in the city’s financial district is owned by Japanese investors, according to Harry Hartnett, research director for Kenneth Leventhal & Co., the accounting and consulting firm.

Further, while Japanese purchases of commercial real estate slowed in greater Los Angeles last year, they have accelerated in other areas of Southern California, including San Diego and Orange counties, Hartnett said.

The Home Savings purchase, however, marks the first major investment for the 47-year-old Takenaka, who formed his own investment banking firm in early 1989 after many years as a partner in the Los Angeles office of the KPMG Peat Marwick accounting firm. He is a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Japan but went to college in America.

His specialty at Peat Marwick was putting together deals between Japanese buyers and American sellers. He is particularly well-known in Japan--where he still spends about half his time--as a business consultant, author and lecturer.

His investment firm, Takenaka & Co., is a 50-50 partner in the Home Savings building with Kawasaki Enterprises, a financial services firm that is part of the Kawasaki group of companies, whose best-known consumer products in the United States are its motorcycles.

In Takenaka’s case, the purchase is a dream finally realized. “I always wished one day that I could own my own office building,” he said. Takenaka & Co.’s offices are on the 16th floor.