A refinancing of the HSBC building in Canary Wharf - which this year changed hands in Britain’s largest-ever single building sale - has been thrown into confusion.

HSBC sold its London headquarters in April for £1.1 billion, but it is still burdened with an £800 million short-term loan that it made out to the Spanish buyer to help to complete the deal. The bank had hoped to refinance its loan through a securitisation this autumn, reducing its financial risk to the building in the process.

However, HSBC, the world’s third-largest bank, has been forced to rethink its options on the loan made out to Metrovacesa, the Spanish property giant. A straightforward exit through selling the loan on to other banks is no longer an attractive option for HSBC, as margins on balance sheet loans have also risen, Estates Gazette reported. “Securitisation was the best option, but it may not be now. The bank has to consider all the alternatives,” a source told the magazine.

Metrovacesa said that it was holding talks with other banks to refinance its debt on the building. A spokesman said: “Obviously, we would have had an easier time six months ago, but we are confident we will find an option that we are happy with.”

Problems with the securitisation of the HSBC tower provide further evidence of the global credit crunch hitting property deals. Under the terms of the deal, Metrovacesa, Spain’s largest quoted real estate company, agreed to lease back the HSBC building for £43.5 million on a 20-year term, with a five-year extension option. That is the equivalent of a yield worth just 3.8 per cent, less than the Bank of England’s base rate. Moreover, the HSBC building is the latest in a string of big commercial property deals to have run into trouble. Last month, Lehman Brothers, the investment bank, withdrew its €1.5 billion (£1 billion) commercial mortgage-backed security issue secured against the Coeur Défense building in Paris, which it bought for €2.1 billion in March, after receiving little interest from buyers.

Metrovacesa is controlled by the Sanahuja family from Catalonia. They got their start in the mid1970s buying and selling flats in the fast-growing city of Barcelona. Later they set up the leisure company MGA-Newpark, which has built cinemas, amusement arcades and bowling alleys all over Spain.

After years of relative obscurity, the family took on a high profile last year during a bitter and protracted battle for control of Metrovacesa.

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