In one of the largest transactions of the past year, New York Life has signed a long-term renewal for its 415,000-square-foot offices at 63 Madison Avenue.

It may just be a plain vanilla renewal, but in a tepid market, this was the second largest lease of 2009, on the heels of Paul Weiss’s 550,000-square-foot renewal at 1285 Sixth Avenue. The mutual life insurance company – the country’s largest – had been scouting the market for…