Amancio Ortega, landlord of the 'big tech'

Pontegadea adds and continues.

The news, advanced by specialized media, that Amancio Ortega's real estate company is negotiating the purchase of the future headquarters of Facebook in Dublin (Ireland) almost reaches the category of paradigm.

It is a voluminous operation (550 million, according to published figures) in a year of great investment activity for the richest man in Spain.

And the new object of desire, an office complex of the highest level, is not an extravagance for those who have known for years what it is like to be the landlord of large technology companies.

Not even Facebook, if the operation is completed, would be a new tenant for Pontegadea.

The vehicle with which Ortega, founder of the Inditex textile group (Zara, Bershka, Massimo Dutti...) manages his investments and obtains the bulk of his wealth from it, already rents offices to the technology company led by Mark Zuckerberg in Madrid and Seattle (USA).

The latter, in fact, he acquired in 2019 after paying some 376 million euros.

In the capital of Spain, it has welcomed the social network in its building at number 35 Paseo de la Castellana, a shared block with seven floors (plus three garages in the basement) that until spring was also the headquarters of the law firm DLA Piper.

The Dublin operation is of another dimension.

It is 100,000 square meters intended to be the largest headquarters of Meta (the parent company of Facebook, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, among others) outside the US. The six buildings in the complex have capacity for 6,000 employees and the rent would be around 22 million euros per year, with a commitment to stay for the next quarter of a century, always according to the data that has been published and on which Pontegadea has not commented.

But Facebook is not the only technological tenant of Ortega, who with a vast real estate empire valued at more than 15,000 million, can boast of including almost all American

in his extensive list of tenants .

Only in Spain, without going any further, it rents offices to Google (in the iconic Torre Picasso in Madrid) and the Apple stores in Barcelona and Valencia.

These are not his only relationships with the firm on the block, because in Paris, Miami and San Francisco he also rents commercial space from them.

More symbolic is the presence of Spotify, to which it rents offices in London.

And especially significant is the relationship with the e-commerce giant Amazon, to which it leases different types of real estate, from offices (Madrid) to distribution platforms.

In fact, two of the latter have been acquired this year in a mega-operation of 905 million for which it acquired seven logistics assets in the US.

A profile that fits

Sources from Pontegadea point out, without specifying the data, that what the large technology companies represent as tenants “is not a high percentage” in their real estate portfolio as a whole.

The group recognized in its annual results for 2021 having entered 647 million from rentals.

But the fact that the weight of

is not particularly relevant does not mean that it is not desired.

In fact, in the logic of Ortega's real estate, associating with companies of this type supposes an almost perfect symbiosis.

"They fall within the characteristics that we are looking for: seriousness, financial stability and extension in the time of the tenant", admit the aforementioned sources.

Also because they are usually companies looking for what in real estate jargon is called

: that is, well-located buildings, with good qualities, ecological certifications and value-added services.

In short, more expensive when buying them, but also when putting them on lease.

The Pontegadea group is, in fact, a network of companies with which Ortega manages his enormous fortune (currently valued at more than 52,000 million euros, according to

).

It has two legs: industrial investment (the most important, the nearly 60% stake it has in Inditex and which brings it juicy dividends) and real estate.

This last sum, according to the results of 2021, buildings valued at 15,264 million that are distributed in nine countries, with the USA, the United Kingdom and Spain being the main markets.

And after a low-key season due to the pandemic, the business has picked up steam again this year.

Since last spring, the company has purchased a major office building in Glasgow, the largest Scottish city;

a luxury housing skyscraper in New York, and the seven logistics assets mentioned above.

If you finally buy the future headquarters of Facebook in Dublin, the investments made since last April will be close to 2,200 million,

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