Google eyes £800m London office hub

London

GOOGLE is in talks to buy a London office complex for as much as £800 million (S$1.41 billion) in what would be one of the biggest such deals in the British capital this year.

The search giant has entered into negotiations to buy the Central Saint Giles development from joint owners Legal & General Group and Mitsubishi Estate.

No deal has been signed. Google already occupies about 40 per cent of the office space in the complex near Tottenham Court Road.

Google is in the process of building a new campus in London's King's Cross district that will eventually house its 4,500 UK employees.

The Central Saint Giles deal would give the company flexibility as it finishes that project, for which it has never confirmed completion or move-in dates.

Alphabet's Google was one of the first major corporations to tell employees to work from home when the novel coronavirus began spreading in March. It said in July that it will let employees do their jobs remotely for another year, pushing back plans to re-open offices.

Land Securities Group, one of the UK's biggest real-estate companies, signalled confidence in the future of London offices in a strategy set out on Monday by new chief executive Mark Allan.

The company plans to sell assets including its leisure properties and reinvest the proceeds in developing new offices and mixed-use projects.

Companies from Netflix to Morgan Stanley are in the process of undertaking moves that show demand for the biggest and best buildings is recovering from lockdown lows. BLOOMBERG