Australia Turns Profit in Japan--200,000%

The Australian government made a 200,000% profit on the Japanese real-estate market by selling part of its Tokyo embassy grounds, the government said today.

A Japanese-Australian development consortium will pay $450 million for 64,600 square feet of prime real estate and an apartment building near the Imperial Palace. Australia bought the site for $215,000 after World War II when land in bomb-devastated Tokyo was absurdly cheap by present-day standards.