British Land buys London West End office from Aviva

* First major UK purchase since market bottomed in July

* Purchase at 8.4 pct initial yield

* Shares up 3.1 pct, outperforms index

LONDON, Oct 19 (Reuters) - British Land (BLND.L), the UK's second largest property firm by market value, said on Monday it has made its first major office purchase in London since the UK commercial property market slump ended in July.

The company paid Aviva Investors (AV.L) 40.25 million pounds ($66 million) for the building in London's prestigious West End district, British Land said in a statement.

At 1140 GMT, shares of British Land, which in September sold a 50 percent stake in London office complex Broadgate to Blackstone (BX.N) [ID:nLI93731], rose 3.1 percent outperforming the UK property stocks index .FTNMX8730 which was up 2.2 percent.

UK commercial property values staged the strongest rise in more than three years in September, after plunging 44 percent from the peak in mid 2007 to hit bottom in July, Investment Property Databank (IPD) data showed this month. [ID:nLE358649]

The fully occupied office building on 39 Victoria Street, bought at an 8.4 percent initial yield, has been rented to the Bank of America until July 2012, British Land added.

The U.S. bank had in return fully sublet the property to nine other tenants including Finmeccanica, Last Minute.com, Aegis Defence Services and the Labour Party.

"The purchase fits in well with our strategy of balancing the office portfolio and increasing our weighting in the West End," British Land's head of offices Tim Roberts said.

"We plan to refurbish, but also we have the option to work with the existing strong line-up of occupiers to renew their leases," Roberts said. ($1=.6135 pounds) (Reporting by Daryl Loo; Editing by Mike Nesbit) (See www.reutersrealestate.com for the global service for real estate professionals from Reuters)