Forget Times Tower, KICC and the Social Security Building, Britam has began constructing the tallest sky-scraper in the country and the third tallest in the continent. Shortly after carrying out a massive re-branding campaign to ‘Britam’, the financial services group that handles over 32 billion shillings in assets doesn’t look to be slowing down.
The 5 billion shilling, 30-storey tower is under construction in the prime Upper Hill area among some of corporate Kenya’s premier business addresses including the KCB Tower, Equity Bank Centre and Old Mutual Building.
Times Tower is currently ranked as Kenya’s tallest building by global building data provider Emporis which also ranks Johannesburg’s Carlton Centre and Ponte City Apartments as first and second tallest in Africa respectively.
Due for completion by the end of 2015, the Britam tower will headquarter the Group while offering 350,000 square feet of ‘Class A’ commercial and office space to multinationals, restaurants, banks and other institutions.
Speaking at the tower’s ground breaking ceremony on Tuesday morning, Britam Group Managing Director Benson Wairegi described how the building will stand adjacent to a 10-storey parking linked to the main tower through an atrium. More than that, Mr. Wairegi said that the building’s roof will have a wind turbine to generate electricity as just one of several other “green” features of the building.
“This project sets the pace for other similar projects that we have planned in the next five years”, said Mr. Wairegi hinting that there was more iconic real-estate to expect from Britam.
To diversify its investment portfolio away from traditional shares, bonds and bank deposits some of which drove Britam into multi-million shilling losses last year, the Group in August announced that it would set up a 10 billion shilling real-estate fund targeting high net worth investors. This was in-line with the Group’s ongoing strategy to tap into the region’s burgeoning property market and become East Africa’s leading financial services company.