The Royal Liver Building has been sold to Princes Foods for £60M – a sum that is £30M lower than the price put on the Grade I-listed building back in 2022.
Everton FC’s corporate offices are on the 7th Floor of the building on the Liverpool waterfront. They relocated there from Goodison Park in 2018 on a 15-year lease after former Everton majority shareholder, Farhad Moshiri, became part-owner of the building in a deal with Luxembourg-based investor Corestate Capital; they acquired the building for £48M.
But just 3 years later, it was put on the market with a £90M price tag, presumably in an attempt to secure a quick return on the investment; however, there was no buyer forthcoming until Prince’s Foods, one of the bigger tenants in the building, completed this latest change in ownership for £60M.
The Royal Liver Building was completed in July 1911. It was opened as the purpose-built headquarters of the fast-growing Royal Liver Assurance Society, which had been set up in 1850.
It is an early example of a building constructed using reinforced concrete. It stands 322 ft tall to the top of the spires and 340 ft to the top of the famous Liver Birds, known as Bertie and Bella. Each Liver Bird is 18 ft high and, according to legend, if the birds were ever to fly away then the city would die.
In 2011, the Royal Liver Group was taken over by Royal London Group in a deal that also included ownership of the Royal Liver Building. By that point, Royal Liver staff occupied only part of the site with other floors let out to multiple business tenants. In 2016, Royal London put the building up for sale with a price tag of £40M.