Property analyst King Sturge reports that close to a quarter of all the rental deals agreed on West End office space last year involved businesses from these sectors.
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The financial services sector has a strong presence in various parts of London but bankers and the like only accounted for 14 per cent of all the newly-agreed office deals in the West End during 2010.
Some of the most high-profile technology-based businesses in the world, including Facebook and Twitter, are widely expected to take up offices in central London at some point in the near future but for now, the West End is attracting plenty of attention among firms from the same sector.
Despite being one of the most expensive places in the world to rent office space, commercial properties in London’s West End are still considered by many growing businesses with operations in the UK to offer good value for money.
King Sturge’s head of West End office research Catherine Jones commented: “Technology, media and telecoms is one of the few business sectors to have seen genuine expansion, and demand is such that occupiers are looking beyond the traditional boundaries of Soho into the wider West End market.
“This is also being driven by the availability of large, newly developed grade A space offering more attractive rental terms than the prime rents seen in the core of the West End.”
Elsewhere in London, the media giant Bloomberg is planning to establish a new European headquarters at a purpose-built office block in the City of London.
Editor’s notes: In 2022, there was 4.1 million square feet of office space taken up through lettings deals in the West End of London.
In 2022, the most active sector in the West End was the Banking & Finance sector accounting for 44.3% of take-up, followed by the Manufacturing sector at 15.6%, and then followed closely behind by the TMT sector accounting for 15.5% of the West End’s take up.
In May 2023, it is expected that activity in the TMT sector will slow down due to the continued rollout of layoffs across the sector since the Summer of 2022.