A company owned by one of Israel's richest men disclosed yesterday that it is in talks to buy a stake in the City of London's famous Broadgate office complex from British Land.

Property and Building, which is controlled by Nochi Dankner, the billionaire, said in a statement to the Tel Aviv stock exchange that it was in the initial stages of buying a stake in Broadgate for £100 million. Harel, Israel's third-biggest insurance company, said separately that it was looking at investing about £45 million.

Under the deal being proposed, the pair would also take on a sizeable part of the £2 billion of debt that is secured on Broadgate, which — along with the cash they are putting in — could give them a half-share in the 32-acre office development, which was developed by British Land and Rosehaugh Stanhope Developments from the mid 1980s.

British Land, the UK's second-largest commercial property company, confirmed last night that it had received preliminary approaches from potential buyers of a stake in the centre — which lies immediately to the northwest of Liverpool Street station and whose tenants include UBS.

A spokesman said: “The company declines to give further details about any of the parties but confirms that discussions are at very early stages.”

Broadgate, whose central design element is a wide space with seating that doubles as an open-air concert venue in the summer and an ice-skating rink during the winter, is valued in British Land's books at £2.3 billion.

British Land has been looking to sell a stake in Broadgate for some months. It was reported in April that it was in talks to sell half of the estate to MGPA, a fund manager backed by Macquarie, the Australian investment bank, although nothing has been heard since then of that proposed transaction.

The company is also said to have held talks with various US private equity investors — while Delancey, the property management firm led by Sir John Ritblat, British Land's former chief executive, was also reported to have been interested at one stage.

Selling a stake in Broadgate would go a long way towards helping British Land to reduce its debts further. Chris Grigg, who succeeded Stephen Hester as chief executive in January after the latter's departure to head Royal Bank of Scotland, has already cut the firm's net debts from more than £5 billion to £3.24 billion through a £740 million rights issue in March and via asset sales. The biggest of these saw British Land sell a 50 per cent stake in the Meadowhall shopping centre in Sheffield for £587.7 million to London & Stamford Property.

Miranda Cockburn, managing director of European real estate research at Cazenove Equities, said: “We think a part sale would be sensible, reducing exposure to such a large asset and improving the diversification within the portfolio. It would also reduce British Land's exposure to future capital expenditure requirements, which are expected to be significant, given the age and redevelopment and refurbishment potential at the estate.

“From a debt perspective, the sale of Broadgate would be beneficial since it would eliminate £2 billion of debt from the balance sheet, with whatever percentage is still held moved into joint ventures held off balance sheet.

“This would give British Land even more balance sheet strength and greater flexibility to deploy its unused debt facilities.”

Shares of British Land closed up 1p at 387p last night, valuing the company at £1.97 billion.

Mr Dankner, 55, is said to be one of Israel's richest men. Apart from commercial property, his other interests include tourism and mobile telecommunications.