The second largest real estate investment trust in the UK, British Land Co, has agreed to lease space at London’s Ropemarker Place to Australia’s largest investment bank, Macquarie Group Ltd.
Macquarie has leased 217,000 sq ft out of the 586,000 sq ft of space available at the Ropemarker Place building, and plans to move 1,000 of its UK employees into the building according to a statement made by the head of Macquarie’s European business side, Andrew Hunt.
The statement did not include the price of the rent or the lease terms or length, although it is known that the current Macquarie lease of Citypoint tower will expire next year.
It is suspected that the rent was somewhat high given the fact that the City of London currently has a low amount of available prime office space for any business that requires more than 200,000 sq ft of desk space.Adding to high rents is the fact that the number of developments planned to be completed by 2012 is the lowest in the last 25 years.
Macquarie was thought to be moving to the DrapersGardens development last October but that was prior to the decision by BlackRock Inc to rent the entire building space this month.
According to a statement by Chris Grigg, the British Land Chief Executive Officer, 80% of Ropemaker Place is now leased.230,000 sq ft of the office space is leased by Mitsubishi UFJ Securities and Bank of Toyota-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd.
Last year Nomura Holdings moved 3,500 employees over to Watermark Place also within the city from the CanaryWharf district.