The country's largest lender, State Bank of India (SBI), has taken on lease the

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former corporate headquarters of Nusli Wadia-owned Bombay Dyeing and Manufacturing Company, at Neville House, Ballard Pier, in south Mumbai.

The bank has occupied 40,000 sq ft of space in the building on a 10-year lease to house its corporate accounts group (CAG), the division that caters to large corporate clients. The four-storied Neville House property of the Wadias will only house trust offices like the Ness Wadia Foundation, NN& RN Wadia Foundation and group investment companies like Damascus Investment and Trading and investment and the office of the Wadia Hospital on the fourth floor of the building.

Most of the corporate offices of the group have relocated to Hemming House at Prabhadevi in southcentral Mumbai.

SBI has got a good deal having got the space in a prime location at an annual rent of Rs 12 crore for the entire space with a reset clause after five years. The bank will occupy the basement, ground floor, the second and the third floor of the building. The corporate accounts group is now housed at Voltas House, owned by Voltas of the Tata group and located nearby. The project finance and leasing division of the bank will shift to Voltas House and the Neville building will also house a branch of the bank. The project finance division is at present accommodated in the SBI corporate centre at Nariman Point, where the bank's chairman, O P Bhat, sits.

“We wanted a larger space and still be centrally located. Some SBI employees have already shifted to the new premises,” said an SBI official.

For the Wadias, it makes sense to get a good tenant who will take on lease the major portion of the building. The Wadias have been trying to make gains from their real estate holdings either through outright sale or through leasing. Recently, the Bombay Dyeing group finalised a deal with Axis Bank to sell its four-storey Wadia tower A located in the Bombay Dyeing mill compound on Pandurang Budhakar Road at Parel in central Mumbai, which has a saleable area of 400,000 sq ft.

For the nine months ended December 31, 2009, Bombay Dyeing made a loss of Rs 25.99 crore on its textile business and Rs 50.34 crore loss in the polyester business. Only its real estate brought in operating profit of Rs 216.69 crore. The company is trying to develop and sell and put on lease their properties to plough back revenues to its core textile business. The company is developing a number of real estate projects.