Katie Oliphant is feeling pretty chipper about the office market. Of course, you would expect the managing director of offices at Canary Wharf Group to spin a positive line about the future of offices. It is in the job description. You won’t fill your estate if you’re downbeat. But Oliphant does have evidence for her optimism.
Over the course of 2022 Oliphant and her team signed 20 deals on the estate – a 54% increase on 2021 – leasing more than 415,000 sq ft to tenants including Citi, Fisher Investments, Brookfield and Genomics England.
Tenants have also recommitted to space on the estate, with Absa, Begbies Traynor, FreedomPay and WallStreetDocs all sticking with their space at Canary Wharf. CWG has also just secured an extra seven-year commitment from Saxo Bank, which has taken 10,000 sq ft on the 26th floor at 40 Bank Street. Achieved rents in the building, according to EG Radius data, are around £50 per sq ft.
And now, as the market settles into the new economy and a new year, Oliphant is feeling confident about the fresh new space the estate is delivering on the upper floors of the flagship One Canada Square.
For the first time in 30 years, the estate has got back floors 46-49 of the 50-storey, 1m sq ft tower. Long-term tenant Bank of New York Mellon, remains in the building but in downsized space on the 41st floor.
Oliphant is excited about the opportunity the more than 200,000 sq ft of space offers. Stripped back to shell and floor, upgraded to the highest sustainability credentials and with a new terrace – set to be London’s highest available private roof terrace – being built on the 47th floor, Oliphant says the space is already attracting lots of interest.
She puts the estate’s increased activity in 2022 down to the changing nature of Canary Wharf, its shift from a soulless office hub to a mixed-use destination. To attract tenants – and, importantly, employees – to office space there needs to be something more today, says Oliphant. There needs to be some other magnetic pull.
“We have seen a transformation of Canary Wharf into one of the UK’s most sustainable mixed-use neighbourhoods, offering an extraordinary environment to all those who live and visit the estate,” she says. “And as such we are seeing good leasing activity with diverse, growing companies and a good pipeline for 2023.”
Tenants agree.
Louis Decuypere, founder and chief executive of Datatonic, which began as a two-person business in CWG’s fintech incubator Level39 and has recently expanded to 15,000 sq ft on level 45 of One Canada Square housing its now 100 employees, says: “When the time came to fix a long-term property lease, staying in Canary Wharf was a no-brainer. Canary Wharf feels more vibrant than ever, blending residential and commercial development with a strong vision of the future and focus on sustainability, and very good commute access.”
Oliphant will admit that there were moments over the past year when the office market looked troublesome, but she believes that Canary Wharf’s new persona is bringing new occupiers to the estate.
Banking and finance organisations still make up around half of the tenants, but the estate’s partnership with Kadans to deliver 823,000 sq ft of life science space, and its growing hub with the NHS and Genomics are bringing more diverse client types to the estate.
Genomics moved its headquarters to Canary Wharf from the Barbican, EC2, taking a 4.5-year lease on 18,000 sq ft at One Canada Square. Chief executive Chris Wrigley says the move to Canary Wharf, putting it closer physically to the NHS and other life science firms, will enable it to deliver its agenda to “lead the world in genomics” more effectively.
For Oliphant, it is this desire to cluster – Kadans has agreed to take 40,000 sq ft for a wet lab and incubator space at 20 Water Street – the demand from tenants for only the best, most sustainable and fit-for-purpose space that keeps her confident that whether the in-office working week has become a Tuesday to Thursday phenomenon or not, Canary Wharf has the ingredients needed to fill the circa 400,000 sq ft of office space it currently has available.
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