The Federal Bank has acquired a large office space spread across five floors in a commercial tower in central Mumbai’s Wadala locality for nearly Rs 3.3 billion, said persons with direct knowledge of the development. The Kochi-headquartered bank has purchased this office space with a total carpet area of over 1.01 lakh sq ft spanning across 12th to 16th floor of the VIOS Tower from an institutional investor NCP Commercial, which is part of global alternative investment major Varde Partners.

As part of the deal, the bank will also get exclusive access to over 145 car parking slots in the ground plus 28-storey commercial building. The deal was registered earlier this week on Wednesday and the bank has paid stamp duty of Rs 1.97 billion for this deal.

“The deal was concluded recently and was finally inked this week. Given the current low vacancy in G block of Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC), the peripheral areas and complexes including Equinox, Kalina, and Wadala have been witnessing growth in demand and actual deals too,” said one of the persons mentioned above.

According to property consultants, the transaction adds to the recent trend of financial institutions consolidating their operations in centralised commercial hubs across India’s major metros. Federal Bank’s acquisition in Mumbai reflects its strategic move to enhance its presence in the financial capital.

For the quarter ended September, Federal Bank reported total business of over Rs 4.99 trillion. The bank also reported its highest-ever net profit of Rs 10.57 billion during the quarter, up 10.8% from a year ago. It has also recorded the highest-ever operating profit at over Rs 15.65 billion.

The commercial tower is part of mixed-use integrated project New Cuffe Parade which includes development of residential, office and education spaces. Varde Partners had acquired this company along with the rights of the commercial tower from Macrotech Developers for Rs 11 billion in December 2019.The project’s anchor tenants include Tata International and GMM Pfaudler. The five floors in this building purchased by Tata Group in 2019 will continue to be owned by Tata, the investment firm had said in a release then.

Built in 2018, the said office building has over 827,000 sq ft of office space spread over a total 29 floors and forms part of a 22-acre mixed-use development.