Japan Investors Set to Buy a Piece of Paris

PARIS â€”  Japanese investors are expected to buy a large stake in France’s Forum des Halles shopping center, a thriving new complex that is as much a part of the Paris cityscape as the Japanese-owned Rockefeller Center is to New York’s skyline.

France’s Credit Lyonnais bank is about to clinch a deal to sell Nippon Life Insurance Co. nearly a third of the shopping center for $68 million, bank sources said today.

In Tokyo, a Nippon spokesman declined to comment on reports of the deal.

The Forum des Halles is a huge multistory complex in the heart of Paris near the Louvre. It is the largest and busiest shopping center in the French capital.

The sources said the deal, which would be Nippon’s first investment in French real estate, would have to be approved by the Japanese Finance Ministry.

A controlling stake in Rockefeller Center, a New York landmark and a symbol of U.S. capitalism, was sold to Japan’s Mitsubishi Estate Co. for $846 million last month.

Nippon, a major life insurer, already has stakes in the French travel company Club Mediterranee and construction group Bouygues.

France last March cleared the sale of one of its top cognac houses to a Japanese concern, part of a growing drive by the Japanese into the French luxury goods sector.

Both the Paris restaurant Lucas-Carton, which has a prestigious three-star ranking in the Michelin gastronomic bible, and the jet-setters’ hair salon Carita have been sold to Japanese interests.