Sears Tower Bought By British

Ha Willis Tower?!
being a Chicago Native this will not change at least it will take a generation to rename it, and maybe if its accepted and or Willis group stays there.

like the John Hancock building "El"/subway stop is called Water Tower becuase the relic standing from the Fires is still up, but any one gets off there is not headed for that artifact.

Sears tower is dead long live SearsTower

I worked for Willis for 12 years and still have old friends working there.

They've always gone for iconic buildings - the Ipswich HQ I worked in was designed by Sir Norman Foster, had all glass walls, a garden on the roof and was the first office in the UK to have escalators. Even appeared on a UK stamp. London HQ at the time was the old Admiralty Building at 10 Trinity Square (as featured in opening credits of The Professionals. )

Good on you Willis It really cheered me up when I heard this yesterday. And in this time of global recession it's also nice to see a British company continuing to expand. If we upset a few Yanks in the process even better

[edit on 14-3-2009 by Essan]

The sears tower is owned by the american group American Landmark Properties They didnt sell it to anyone. It was just part of the Willis lease deal. They only leased a 140,000 sq foot space. The sears tower has a total of 3 millions sq. feet available for lease. So in other words they are leasing about 3.5% of the total building. This hardly constitutes ownership of the building.

The 110-story Chicago giant will be renamed Willis Tower under a leasing deal announced Thursday. The New York-based owners signed a lease with Willis Group Holdings Ltd., an insurance broker, for 140,000 square feet plus the naming rights

.....

Real estate experts wondered why the owners handed naming rights to a tenant that will take only 3.5 percent of the 3.8 million-square-foot building. In 2005, naming rights were on the table in lease talks with computer seller CDW Corp., which was a potentially bigger tenant. CDW wound up at 120 S. Riverside.

For its own naming deal, Aon occupies about 25 percent of its namesake tower. Like Willis, it has no ownership share in the structure

source

See, they have zero ownership.