(Yicai Global) Nov. 26 -- Financial constraints have prompted HNA Group to sell its last remaining property in the UK for almost a quarter less than the Chinese conglomerate paid for it three years ago.

Haikou-based HNA will sell 17 Columbus Courtyard in London's Canary Wharf business district to Hong Kong Sun Hung Kai & Co. and Australian investment bank Macquarie Group for GBP100 million (USD129 million), The Paper reported. It bought the premises for GBP131 million in April 2016.

The sale is the aviation, real estate and tourism group's latest effort to fend off a cash crunch after a too-swift overseas expansion. HNA earlier unloaded another office building in the gentrified former East London dockland, the report said. The timing of both sales coincides with the UK's pending exit from the European Union, which is casting a pall over the country's realty sector.

The Columbus Courtyard property is an 11-story premium office building. Completed in 1999, it has 8,867 square meters of floorage. It has an annual rental yield of 4.59 percent, bringing in GBP6.4 million last year. Credit Suisse Group, which has been its sole occupant, plans to vacate the premises early next year amid cost-cutting.

Sun Hung Kai's main businesses include securities, foreign exchange trading, gold, commodities and futures and options brokerage. It is not to be muddled with Sun Hung Kai Properties held by the Li Zhaoji clan, also of Hong Kong.

HNA also disposed of the former Thomson Reuters London office block in Canary Wharf that it bought in August 2015. That edifice also went for a fire sale price when a Chinese company scooped it up for GBP100 million, Reuters reported in February.

Editor: Ben Armour