Legend Holdings has placed Banque Internationale à Luxembourg on the market as a single indivisible lot, with the buyer required to physically remove the entire bank — vaults, marble columns, teller windows, the lot — from its current site within one weekend. The asking price is 2.5 billion euros, and the auctioneer has confirmed that no item may be sold separately.
«We are not selling shares, we are selling a building and everything bolted to it,» said a spokesperson for the holding company. «The buyer must bring their own cranes. We have measured the facade: it comes off in four pieces. The vault door alone requires a flatbed with sixteen axles.»
Preparations have already begun. A team of surveyors has spent three weeks mapping the bank's load-bearing walls, and a Luxembourg construction firm has been contracted to build a temporary road wide enough for the convoy. Neighboring businesses have been told to expect intermittent closures as the bank is lifted onto rollers and pulled toward the buyer's chosen site, which must be declared at the time of purchase.
Staff have been issued with new contracts that require them to report to work at the new location, wherever that may be, on the Monday after the move. «We are treating this as a relocation, not a liquidation,» the spokesperson added. «The employees will travel with the building. It is simpler that way.»
By Thursday, a queue of potential buyers had formed outside the bank's headquarters, each carrying a tape measure and a notebook. One declined to give a name but said he was interested in the vault door as a garden feature. The auction is scheduled for the end of the month, weather permitting.