| Telus sells main B.C. and Alberta office buildings for $192.25 million Canadian Press / Nov 2000 BURNABY, B.C. (CP) - Telus Corp. has sold its headquarters building in suburban Vancouver and the twin-tower Telus Plaza in Edmonton for a total of $192.25 million. Canada's No. 2 telecommunications company said Wednesday that its 21-storey office in Burnaby was sold to ICBC Properties Ltd., a unit of the Insurance Corp. of British Columbia, for $98.25 million. The Edmonton office towers, the taller one of which rises 33 storeys, were bought for $94 million by a Canadian pension fund which Telus said had declined to have its name made public. Telus will continue to occupy the properties under long-term leases. "This sale is an integral step of our 100-day plan and follows a commitment we made to reinvest the capital we have currently tied up in some of our administrative real estate," Darren Entwistle, who took over in July as Telus president and CEO, said in a statement. "The capital raised from this sale will help fund the national expansion of our Internet protocol backbone network, enabling us to take advantage of significant opportunities for growth in the business and wholesale markets." The sale of the Edmonton plaza comes just over a month after Telus completed a two-year, $11-million refurbishment of the centre, where 3,400 Telus workers make the company the biggest private-sector employer in the Alberta capital. Having sold its main administrative centres in B.C. and Alberta, Telus is also negotiating to dispose of two properties in Calgary, the Calgary Mobility building and the Telus Tower. |