Swire Properties’ Don Taylor Joins Commercial Hub Panel at Mingtiandi Hong Kong Forum

Don Taylor, director of the office division at Swire Properties, will join a panel discussion on Hong Kong commercial hubs at the Mingtiandi Hong Kong Focus Forum on 27 June. Tickets to the event are available via the Register link below while supplies last.

One of Hong Kong’s best-known developers, Swire Properties has grown its office portfolio substantially in recent years with a focus on the company’s Island East stronghold of Quarry Bay.

Don Taylor is responsible for the leasing and management of Swire Properties’ Asian office portfolio, which includes the Taikoo Place commercial complex in Quarry Bay and is poised to expand as the builder buys up sites for further projects nearby.

To shed some light on opportunities offered by Hong Kong’s evolving commercial hubs, Mingtiandi has invited Taylor to a panel discussion at the Hong Kong Focus Forum on 27 June.

The forum, which is expected to attract 250 guests, will be the largest gathering of institutional real estate investors in Hong Kong since 2019 and will also feature speakers from Blackstone, Link REIT, Warburg Pincus and PAG. Tickets to the forum, which is sponsored by Yardi, are available by registering via the link above.

Quarry Bay Empire Grows

In mid-2022, Swire Properties applied for a forced sale to acquire the remaining pieces it does not already own in a pair of ageing buildings at 9 to 39 Hoi Wan Street and 33 to 41 Tong Chong Street in the core of its home turf in Quarry Bay.

Should the landlord behind Taikoo Place succeed in gaining full ownership of the properties, which are surrounded on three sides by Swire’s Lincoln House, Dorset House and East Residences, it would be set to add a high-end office tower spanning as much as 300,900 square feet (27,954 square metres) to that complex.

About a 10-minute walk from Taikoo Place are two more sites on King’s Road and Shipyard Lane for which Swire had applied for compulsory sales in 2018. The developer plans to build a 779,000 square foot project for “office and other commercial uses” once it consolidates the Zung Fu Industrial Building and the Wah Ha Factory Building, the latter of which will go up for public auction on the morning of 28 June.

In June of last year, Swire notched what was reportedly Hong Kong’s Island’s biggest office lease since the pandemic, with a local unit of China CITIC Bank agreeing to take up around 15 percent of the developer’s Two Taikoo Place office tower.

“Preleasing for Two Taikoo Place is gaining momentum,” Taylor said at the time. “In addition to CITIC, and Julius Baer, which has committed to four floors (approximately 92,000 square feet), we are also in active discussions with several prospective tenants from various sectors.”

Wearing Many Hats

Taylor joined Swire Properties in 1991 and has served in a number of roles in development and valuations, retail, residential (including serviced apartments) and offices.

He was previously general manager for office at the real estate arm of the centuries-old Swire trading group. A Chartered Surveyor, Taylor is a member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and the Hong Kong Institute of Surveyors.

Founded in Hong Kong in 1972, Swire Properties develops, owns and operates mixed-use, principally commercial properties in Hong Kong and mainland China, with the business comprising the three main areas of property investment, property trading and hotel investment.