Apple is gearing up to establish a new office in Canary Wharf as it weighs up its options on a post-Covid return to the workplace.
EG understands the tech giant has gone under offer to lease two floors at One Bank Street, E14. The building is also the London headquarters of French investment bank Société Générale.
The potential deal is believed to span around 70,000 sq ft at the Canary Wharf Group-owned tower, and comes as Apple also prepares to move into its future UK headquarters at Battersea Power Station this year.
The iPhone maker is set to relocate about 1,400 staff from eight sites in London to an Apple campus in the Grade II listed former power station building, taking up 500,000 sq ft and six floors of office space.
It also agreed to lease about 52,000 sq ft at 22 Bishopsgate, EC2, in October 2019. That space was reported to accommodate the team at Apple Pay, the company’s payments division.
Canary Wharf Group’s 27-storey, 700,000 sq ft One Bank Street was completed in 2019. It includes three trading floors, a retail unit at ground level and public access to a newly created promenade along the South Dock. The building also has features to attract wildlife such as a living wall, the first on the Canary Wharf estate.
Should Apple move in there, it would join Societe Generale’s circa 2,500 staff who occupy the first seven floors of the building over 280,000 sq ft of offices.
In 2019, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development also agreed to lease 365,000 sq ft across the top 13 floors of the tower, on a decade-long deal starting in 2022.
Directors on the estate have said they expect office workers to return in their droves this summer as lockdown restrictions are lifted, however much will depend on how companies handle the return to the workplace.
Quoting rents in Canary Wharf were around £50 per sq ft pre-pandemic.
Cushman & Wakefield, which is advising Apple, declined to comment. Canary Wharf Group and Apple also declined to comment.
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