BZW headquarters to move to Canary Wharf
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Your support makes all the difference.BZW, the investment banking arm of Barclays, is to move its headquarters to London's Docklands in the biggest single letting secured in Britain.
More than 1,700 employees of the bank will move to Canary Wharf, the office complex developed by the Reichmann brothers' Olympia & York, receiving £1,000 a head per year to compensate for the perceived inconvenience of travelling to work on the Docklands Light Railway.
BZW is taking 510,000 sq ft in the development, meaning almost three- quarters of the offices at Canary Wharf are now taken. Staff from the foreign exchange and fixed-interest trading operations will begin moving in at the end of next year.
BZW also plans to refurbish its existing offices at Royal Mint Court in the City of London where it will house its equity trading, corporate finance and asset management divisions.
When the move was first mooted last November, many of BZW's staff expressed dismay at the shift to the former docks in east London. The financial incentive is planned to run until the Jubilee Line extension is completed in 1998.
The Jubilee Line is expected to transform the viability of Docklands as a business centre, putting Canary Wharf within 10 minutes of Waterloo station and just 15 minutes from Green Park in the West End.
Currently the 13,000 workers in the office scheme have to take the light railway from the City or drive through the Limehouse link, which at a cost of £300m was Britain's most expensive stretch of road.
Canary Wharf never discloses the terms of lettings but it is thought that BZW will enjoy a substantial rent-free period. The landlord, owned by a consortium of Olympia & York's banks, is also expected to refurbish the building for the bank.
The success of Canary Wharf has accelerated since it came out of administration in October 1993, when it had a working population of only 7,000.
Rising numbers of workers have attracted increasing numbers of restaurants and shops, making the site less of an office monoculture.
Recent lettings have brought Crdit Suisse and Morgan Stanley to Canary Wharf. In the media, the Daily Telegraph, Mirror Group and the Independent all have offices there.
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