Last month, Sony sold its Madison Avenue headquarters building in New York for $1.1 Billion. The sale netted the electronics manufacturer around $770 million in cash, which the company needs as it various divisions (electronics, motion pictures, music, video games) have begun to feel the financial crunch of the past few years as well as increased competition from companies such as Samsung. Since Sony’s offices in the building will not be moving, it’s clear that Sony needed some quick cash to prop up its earnings.
Today, Sony announced that it has sold yet another of its buildings. Its Sony City Osaki building in Tokyo has been sold to Nippon Building Fund Inc. and an unnamed “Japanese institutional investor” for ¥111.1 billion, or around $1.2 billion. The deal was very similar to the Madison Avenue sale, and Sony will be leasing its current space in the building for five years.
Sony has stated the sales are part of a reorganization of its assets “in an effor to strengthen its corporate structure.” In other words, they needed the money.
Why does Sony need all of this quick cash? To keep investors happy is another easy answer, but to speculate, as the company nears production of the recently announced (and powerful) PlayStation 4, it could be preparing to take a loss on each console in order to challenge Microsoft in the U.S. home video game console market.
