This article was published on July 29, 2025, at 4:10 p.m. on the ChosunBiz MoneyMove site.
Domestic alternative investment management firm LB Asset Management is pushing for the sale of TCC Dongyang Tower located in Dangsan-dong, Seoul. TCC Dongyang Tower is considered a rare asset that can support data center development in the urban area. It already has electricity usage contracts and building permits, and can be converted into office space or a data center depending on the buyer's intended use.
According to the investment banking (IB) industry on the 29th, LB Asset Management has decided to sell TCC Dongyang Tower and the rights to develop a data center, selecting Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL), a global commercial real estate services firm, as its advisor. The sellers have recently distributed teaser memorandums (TM) to multiple strategic investors (SI) and financial investors (FI). A TM is a document distributed to gauge potential buyers' intent to acquire before the distribution of an investment memorandum (IM).
TCC Dongyang Tower, located in Dangsan-dong, Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul, is a medium to large-sized office building with a total floor area of 29,101.95 square meters, comprising five basement levels and 19 above-ground floors. TCC Dongyang used it as its head office until selling it to Koramco Asset Management in 2016 for liquidity purposes. Afterward, Koramco Asset Management disposed of the office to Pavilion Asset Management (currently Kyobo AIM Asset Management), and key personnel involved in the acquisition later moved to LB Asset Management, bringing the asset along.
TCC Dongyang Tower is an asset that can support data center development in Seoul. LB Asset Management signed an electricity usage contract with Korea Electric Power Corporation for a scale of 20 megawatts (MW) at the end of last year. The amount of 20 MW is equivalent to the total electricity usage of a small city, capable of accommodating up to 120,000 servers. Kakao's Ansan data center built last year is also at the 20 MW level. The building permit for new construction and remodeling of data centers has also been obtained from the Seoul city.
It is evaluated to have good locational conditions, situated between major data center clusters such as Sangam and Gasan Digital Complex. An industry insider noted, "It has a locational advantage that is particularly favorable for end-users in the financial sector, who consider ultra-low latency (the very short time it takes for information to move from one point to another) as a critical selection criterion, and they can access all major business districts in Seoul within 30 minutes, making it an attractive location for data center users for enterprise purposes."
Recently, as data centers have emerged as essential infrastructure for artificial intelligence (AI), the value of assets that can be utilized as data centers has also increased. Accordingly, industry players expect that LB Asset Management will attract the interest of information technology (IT) and cloud service companies looking to use TCC Dongyang Tower as their head office, as well as real estate asset management firms and developers seeking investment returns.
TCC Dongyang Tower can be converted for either sole use as a data center or a mixed-use combining office and data center. The sellers explained in the teaser letter, "There is also the possibility of a development plan that horizontally expands the data center to the rear of the office building while preserving the existing structure," noting, "This is a strategic alternative that can simultaneously expect operational efficiency and long-term asset value appreciation."