Back Bay building sells for more than double its last sale price

A Back Bay office has changed hands for the first time in more than two decades, for more than double its last sale price, by a group that reportedly manages investments for Qatar’s royal family. An 11-story office at 855 Boylston St. sold late last month for $99.5 million, a Suffolk County deed shows. The deal is a bright spot for commercial transactions amid a recent string of sales of downtown properties for big discounts. The buyer, 855 Boylston Inc., is directed by Sheikh Khalid Thani A. T. Al-Thani, public records show. Al-Thani is a director at Al Duwaliya Asset Management Ltd., a London-based real estate investment manager that reportedly oversees property investments of the Qatari royal family. The seller is an affiliate of the Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association, which initially purchased 855 Boylston St. in December 2000 for $47.2 million. The red brick office property at 855 Boylston St. is located across from the Hynes Convention Center and is fully leased to 13 tenants, including Berklee College of Music. Newmark brokered the transaction. — CATHERINE CARLOCK

PHARMACIES

CVS Health beat third-quarter forecasts thanks partially to its growing pharmacy benefits management side, but the health care giant is cautious about next year. Interim chief financial officer Tom Cowhey told analysts Wednesday that it would be “prudent for investors to ground their expectations” for adjusted earnings at the low end of a range of $8.50 to $8.70 per share. That’s also what the company expects for full-year earnings this year. CVS Health operates one of the nation’s largest drugstore chains with more than 9,000 locations. It runs prescription drug plans for big clients like insurers and employers through a large pharmacy benefit management business. It also provides health insurance for more than 25 million people through its Aetna arm. — ASSOCIATED PRESS

MEDIA

The magazine giant Condé Nast will cut about 5 percent of its workforce, backtracking on a much-ballyhooed plan to build up an in-house video studio to tap into Hollywood’s demand for film and TV ideas. The layoffs will affect about 270 employees. Roger Lynch, the chief executive of Condé Nast, told workers in a note on Wednesday morning that the cuts were a response to digital advertising pressures, a decline in social media traffic, and shifting audience behaviors, including a move to short-form video. He said the video business would be folded in with the editorial brands. — NEW YORK TIMES

LEGAL

Bayer’s Monsanto unit was ordered by a California jury to pay $332 million to a former land surveyor who blamed his cancer on his use of the company’s controversial Roundup weedkiller — the third trial loss this month for the company. Jurors in state court in San Diego on Tuesday awarded Michael Dennis, 57, a total of $7 million in actual damages and $325 million in punitive damages over his claims that 35 years of using Roundup on his lawns and gardens caused his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Until this month, Bayer had won nine Roundup cases in a row. The company has reserved $16 billion so far to deal with the costs of the litigation. — BLOOMBERG NEWS

PHARMACEUTICALS

Growing demand for Novo Nordisk’s weight-loss and diabetes drugs is fueling a rise in illegal sales in its home country of Denmark, where authorities are now seeking to clamp down on the illicit activity. The Danish Medicines Agency has reported to police 26 websites which claim to sell products such as Novo’s Ozempic and Wegovy as well as potency drugs. The websites aren’t approved to sell medicines and there are no guarantees the products are legitimate, the agency said in a statement. — BLOOMBERG NEWS

SHIPPING

The world needs sugar from top producer Brazil more than ever to help ease global shortages. Congestion at key ports means the country can’t ship it fast enough. More than a decade after port logjams plagued Latin America’s biggest economy — sending sugar prices rallying — logistics are being stretched to their maximum again. Approximately 70 vessels are waiting some 20 days to load over 3 million tons of sugar in the country, shipping agency SA Commodities said. That’s equivalent to a month of exports. — BLOOMBERG NEWS

PHARMACEUTICALS

GSK raised its guidance for the second time this year as demand surges for its breakthrough vaccine to prevent a common respiratory virus in adults. The UK pharmaceutical company now expects sales to increase by as much as 13 percent and adjusted earnings per share to rise as much as 20 percent this fiscal year. The pickup in performance has been driven in part by the successful launch of Arexvy, the new RSV vaccine for older adults. — BLOOMBERG NEWS

AUTOMOTIVE

Toyota’s July-September profit jumped nearly threefold from a year ago as vehicle sales grew around the world and a cheap yen boosted the Japanese automaker’s overseas earnings. Toyota Motor Corp. reported Wednesday 1.28 trillion yen ($8.5 billion) in quarterly profit, up from 434 billion yen the previous year. Quarterly sales rose 24 percent to 11.43 trillion yen ($75.7 billion) from 9.22 trillion yen. A cheap yen is a plus for Japan’s giant exporters like Toyota by raising the value of its overseas earnings when translated into yen. The US dollar was trading at about 145 Japanese yen in the latest quarter, up from 138 yen. It’s trading above 150 yen lately. — ASSOCIATED PRESS

LEGAL

A jury in Illinois has ordered Chicago-based Conagra Brands to pay $7.1 million to a Pennsylvania woman who was badly injured in 2017 when a can of commercial brand cooking spray ignited in a kitchen at her workplace and set her aflame. The verdict, issued Monday in favor of Tammy Reese of Shippensburg, Pa., is the first of numerous other cases from burn victims across the country with similar stories citing accidents that occurred with Conagra-made cooking spray brands, including its popular grocery store brand Pam. — ASSOCIATED PRESS

INTERNATIONAL

A Chinese court has ruled that a Tesla vehicle wasn’t the cause of a 2022 accident that killed two people and injured three others, Shanghai Securities News reported. The automaker had sued a social media influencer who alleged the crash — which happened in November last year — was caused by a malfunctioning Model Y. A forensics investigations institute ruled out the possibility that the accident was caused by defects in the steering or braking system, according to the report, which cited a court document. — BLOOMBERG NEWS