Amazon Search Will Take London Office Space Past 1M SF
Tech giant Amazon has appointed advisers to find more than 200K SF of new office space, in a move that will take its London footprint past 1M SF and make it one of the biggest occupiers in the UK capital.
According to The Times, Amazon has tasked Cushman & Wakefield with finding a new building as it continues to expand its UK operation in spite of the threat of a new tax on technology companies from the recently elected Conservative government.
Amazon currently occupies about 920K SF in London. It has 600K SF at Principal Place on the northern edge of the City, 264K SF at 60 London in Holborn and the remainder across several smaller offices.
The requirement tallies with rumours of an expansion for the company that had been circulating in London, where it was supposedly in talks to take all of the 186K SF WeWork has leased at The Stage mixed-use scheme in Shoreditch.
A new leasing of 200K SF would take Amazon’s overall office space to 1.1M SF in London. That would make it the fifth largest occupier in the city behind WeWork with 4M SF, Google with about 1.6M SF and Barclays and HSBC with 1.3M SF apiece, and tied with Facebook. It would leapfrog banks JP Morgan and Citi in terms of office occupation, highlighting how big tech firms are increasingly replacing banks as London’s biggest occupiers.
