By Iain Withers
LONDON (Reuters) -JPMorgan said on Thursday it would build a huge new tower in the Canary Wharf financial district in East London, committing billions of pounds to Britain on the heels of a closely watched UK budget that has sought to reassure investors of the nation’s finances.
JPMorgan said the project would contribute 9.9 billion pounds ($13.1 billion) over six years to the local economy – including the cost of construction – and create 7,800 jobs.
A source familiar with the project said it would cost a few billion pounds to build and designs were still being finalised, including the height.
But it would be one of Europe’s biggest towers by floorspace. The planned 3 million square feet (280,000 square metres) will be more than double the floorspace of Britain’s tallest building, The Shard, and Germany’s Commerzbank Tower, which cover about 1.3 million square feet apiece.
TOWER WILL BE BANK’S LARGEST OFFICE IN EUROPE
JPMorgan is the biggest bank in the United States and also has a big investment bank with a sizeable presence in London. The new tower will house up to 12,000 of JPMorgan’s employees and will be its largest office in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the bank said.
The move is a victory for the Canary Wharf financial district, which struggled to retain big tenants after the COVID-19 pandemic but has had a run of better leasing as companies demand that more people return to the office.
“The UK government’s priority of economic growth has been a critical factor in helping us make this decision,” JPMorgan Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon said, a day after supporting UK finance minister Rachel Reeves’ budget in rare public remarks on a budget day.
JPMorgan said the investment, soon after building a new global headquarters in New York, was subject to the business environment remaining positive in the UK, but if it goes ahead as planned it would be a significant post-Brexit win for London.
London’s financial centre has lost some of its appeal since Brexit, with some financial firms forced to move thousands of roles to the European Union to serve those clients.
Reuters first reported last year that JPMorgan was weighing options for its UK headquarters in London after the Wall Street bank outgrew its existing 33-storey tower in Canary Wharf.
It had also been considering upgrading its existing building on Bank Street in Canary Wharf and moving to the more central City of London. The bank has been one of the most assertive large employers in telling staff to return to the office five days a week, increasing pressure on its existing office space.
NEW TOWER ON THE BANKS OF THE THAMES
JPMorgan is building the tower on a site known as ‘Riverside South’ that it bought in 2008 to the west of the Canary Wharf estate on the banks of the River Thames.
It had originally planned to build a new UK HQ on the site, but this was shelved in the aftermath of the global financial crisis in favour of moving into Lehman Brothers’ old office.
JPMorgan has outgrown that 1.1 million-square-foot tower, partly due to the launch and expansion of its British retail bank Chase, which competes with local lenders like Lloyds on current accounts and credit cards.
The new tower will be designed by Foster + Partners, the practice founded by renowned architect Norman Foster, who also designed JPMorgan’s recently opened global HQ in New York.
JPMorgan’s Wall Street rival Goldman Sachs also said on Thursday it would expand its office in Birmingham in Britain and hire 500 staff there to double its workforce in the city in coming years.
($1 = 0.7548 pounds)
(Reporting by Iain Withers; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
