Property fund manager Charter Hall has locked onto the country’s biggest direct office tower deal transaction, a $2.1 billion deal to acquire the two-tower Southern Cross complex in the Melbourne CBD, backed by Singapore’s powerful sovereign wealth fund, GIC.

While the sheer scale of the deal is historic, more focus will turn to the investment yield of about 4.5 per cent at which it is expected the transaction will be struck. That yield is a little softer than pricing on Sydney’s trophy towers but nevertheless represents a relatively tight return on capital invested into a city that experienced two years of rolling lockdowns.