BNP Paribas plans first London office build

[Published December 200 and updated May 2023] The real estate aspect of the global banking group BNP Paribas is planning its first office development project in London, having signed an acquisition deal with the Kings Cross Central Limited Partnership.

Around 40,000 sq m of office space is to be established at the site in central London for which the Paris-based business has agreed to pay an undisclosed sum.

In addition to several areas of office space, BNP Paribas is aiming to have 800,000 sq m of commercial space at the King’s Cross site being put to other uses, which are also as yet unspecified.

Several of the real estate firm’s own employees are likely to be relocated to the central London offices once work on the development is completed in roughly five years’ time, as BNP Paribas Real Estate’s chairman Philippe Zivkovic has explained.

Mr Zivkovic has indicated that work on the London offices will begin shortly after the city has hosted the Olympic Games in 2012 and he noted that each of his company’s six different business lines will soon have a permanent presence in the UK.

Bosses at the French real estate firm are pleased with their acquisition and office building plans, which are said to include some “ambitious targets” as far as energy-saving and sustainability issues are concerned.

BNP Paribas Real Estate has operating bases in a number of the UK’s largest cities and recently noted the strong performance of the serviced offices it manages in the northeast of England and particularly in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne.

The commercial property experts have more than 3,500 employees in total across Europe and 129 office bases worldwide.

Editor’s notes: As part of development, in 2012, the French bank embarked on developing a new £80m Kings Cross HQ for itself which would be conveniently close to the Eurostar Station at St Pancras.

However, it was announced in 2014 that BNP Paribas had abandoned its own plans for the development to make way for Google which was in the hunt for its own London HQ.

As of May 2023, BNP Paribas’s London headquarter offices are located on Harewood Avenue NW1 close to Marylebone Station and Google’s London HQ office address is Pancras Square N1C.

Famously, Google’s Kings Cross HQ, spanning 330 metres, is longer than The Shard is tall as that stands at 310 metres.