A group led by one of the world's richest women, Chinese real-estate tycoon Zhang Xin, paid a reported $1.4 billion for a 40 percent stake in the most expensive US building on the market - the General Motors office tower in midtown Manhattan.

In one of the largest purchases of a single US property by a Chinese investor, the family of Zhang, CEO of the largest property developer in Beijing and Shanghai, teamed up with Brazil's Safra family to buy the interest in the 50-story white marble-clad landmark once owned by Donald Trump for an undisclosed sum. The Wall Street Journal, citing sources familiar with the transaction, valued the sale at about $1.4 billion and the building at $3.4 billion.

The deal follows food company Shuanghui International Holdings' agreement last week to acquire giant US pork producer Smithfield Foods Inc for $4.7 billion, in what would be the biggest takeover of a US company by a Chinese buyer.

Sungate Trust, the investment group representing the two families, purchased the stake from Goldman Sachs US Real Estate Opportunities Fund and Meraas Capital through Los Angeles-based real estate and investment firm CBRE Group Inc. Boston Properties Inc, which bought the building together with a group of Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds in 2008 for a then-record $2.8 billion, continues to hold the remaining 60 percent interest. It has said it isn't selling its stake.

The group hired CBRE to market the 40 percent stake last year, hoping to cash in on the sharp rise in value of top-quality property in large US cities, the Journal reported.

CBRE said the transaction, which closed Friday, represented the highest valuation for a property since the building's 2008 sale.

"News travels fast," the 47-year-old Zhang commented on a report of the deal that she first posted Sunday night on the Sina Weibo microblogging site, similar to Twitter. Zhang, a prolific blogger, has nearly 6 million followers.

Darcy Stacom, who co-handled the sale for CBRE, said in a statement that the deal signals "a return to the billion-dollar plus level for an individual investment transaction". She said it underscores "both the GM building's universal appeal as one of the world's most important commercial assets and New York City's undiminished value, as the premier location for trophy investment properties."

Stacom and partner Bill Shanahan have been involved in a number of major New York real estate transactions in recent years, including Google's $1.8 billion purchase of its New York headquarters in the West Side neighborhood of Chelsea in 2010.

The 2 million square-foot tower built in 1968 sits in a prime midtown Manhattan location across Fifth Avenue from Central Park. Its office rents are among Manhattan's highest. Occupying an entire city block, its modernist design makes it one of the city's most recognizable structures. Retail tenants such as high-end toy seller FAO Schwarz and an Apple store have also made it a tourist attraction. Other notable tenants include the cosmetics maker Estee Lauder Cos.

Zhang negotiated to buy the GM building stake as an individual. China Soho Ltd, the company she built with her husband, Pan Shiyi, wasn't involved in the talks, the Journal reported, citing people close to the discussions.

Forbes has ranked her as the world's seventh-richest woman with a net worth of $3.6 billion.

A CBS "60 Minutes" broadcast in March told how Zhang rose from "wretched" poverty and worked on assembly lines as a teenager and went on to become the chief executive of China's largest developer of high-quality commercial real estate, with $10 billion in assets.

Reporter Leslie Stahl called Zhang "the fifth-richest self-made billionaire woman in the world". She said: "When she opens a building, it can be like a Hollywood premiere."

The report said Zhang's buildings are "futuristic and daring and would be at home in New York or London - the expression of China's emergence into the modern world". Zhang acknowledged a liking for big projects. "If you think about the character of China, it's bigness," she told Stahl.

michaelbarris@chinadailyusa.com

(China Daily USA 06/04/2013 page2)