Los Angeles fund manager Capital Group has completed its $210-million purchase of the Bunker Hill skyscraper it already occupied as a renter and vows to continue expanding its downtown presence.
Capital Group was an anchor tenant at Bank of America Plaza, which it will now operate as a landlord. The 55-story tower at 333 S. Hope St. was completed in 1974 and has long ranked as one downtown’s most prominent office addresses. Capital Group has been headquartered there since 1978.
Bank of America Plaza at 333 S. Hope St. was purchased by investment firm Capital Group. The building also houses the firm’s headquarters.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The move to buy the building at a substantial discount to its previous value is part of a pattern of well-heeled tenants deciding to become owners instead of renters in recent years as office property values plunged due to the pandemic and a shift to remote work for many companies.
“We knew the best landlord we could possibly have would be ourselves,” said Capital Group Chief Executive Mike Gitlin when the sale was first announced in April.
Bank of America Plaza’s previous owner, Brookfield Properties, defaulted on a $400 million loan and put the building on the market instead of facing foreclosure.
It was the largest office sale in Los Angeles in 2026 and the largest in Los Angeles County since 2023, according to real estate brokerage Colliers, which marketed the property on behalf of the court-appointed receiver.
Potential buyers competing for Bank of America Plaza included both private and institutional investors from the U.S. and overseas, said Mark Schuessler, a broker at Colliers.
Capital Group has been headquartered in downtown Los Angeles since it was founded in 1931, according to Chief Operating Officer Rob Klausner . “We view it as the ideal location to invest in as we bring our Los Angeles based teams together,” he said.
Capital Group is the largest occupant in the building, taking up 350,000 square feet on 14 floors. It plans to gradually take over another five floors as it consolidates employees from other offices downtown and in Santa Monica.
“The best way to ensure a great environment in downtown L.A. is to create what we’re calling a vertical campus” with 2,100 employees, Gitlin said. “It was just this unique opportunity where the price was much lower than it had been historically, and it was for sale.”
Bank of America is also a large tenant in the building and will continue to have its name on top. Other occupants include economic consulting firm Analysis Group Inc., law firm Musick Peeler & Garrett and Alliant Insurance Services.
Capital Group has more than 9,000 employees in 34 offices in multiple countries. It manages $3.4 trillion in assets for millions of wealth management and institutional clients, a representative said.
Owner-users have surged as key players in L.A.’s office market, now accounting for nearly half of all deals, according to real estate data provider CoStar , while institutional investors’ share of purchases has fallen from 45% to 26%.
Office users from the public sector are among the buyers. The city of Los Angeles plans to buy a 35-story tower downtown for use by the Department of Water and Power.
Manulife U.S. Real Estate Investment Trust said in April that it would sell its high-rise at 865 S. Figueroa St. for $92.5 million pending approval from Los Angeles officials. It has an assessed value of $248 million.
Another major public buyer of a downtown office building was Los Angeles County, which in 2024 bought Gas Co. Tower for $200 million, a steep drop from its $632-million valuation in 2020. County officials said at the time that the foreclosure sale was too good a deal to pass up.
The county is gradually moving workers into the 55-story skyscraper at the base of Bunker Hill that was widely considered one of the city’s most desirable office buildings when it was completed in 1991.
