Nomura, the large Japanese financial firm, is taking about 50,000 square feet at 277 Park Avenue.
The firm bases the bulk of its New York operations in lower Manhattan at the World Financial Center, an office hundreds of thousands of square feet in size that the company is currently in the process of deciding whether to relocate or renew.
While Nomura’s plans for that headquarters space have captured the bulk of attention in recent months regarding its real estate decision making, the firm had quietly been searching for midtown offices as well sources said.
The bank will take 277 Park Avenue’s entire 38th and 39th floors in a sublease from JP Morgan Chase, which has moved to dispose of hundreds of thousands of square feet it leases in the 50-story, 1.85 million square foot tower. The term on the sublease runs until 2020.
John Cefaly, an executive at the real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield who represents a number of high profile tenants in the financial industry, handled the deal for Nomura. A leasing team led by Cefaly also is handling the sublease assignment for JP Morgan Chase and represented the bank in the deal with Nomura..
A person familiar with JP Morgan’s space at 277 Park said that rents had originally been offered in the low $50s per square foot when the city’s leasing was slow months ago, but have since risen as activity picked up. The person speculated that Nomura’s rents could be as high as about $60 per square foot.