UK owners still dominate London office ownership
Cash from around the world has poured into the capital’s business districts in recent years, but domestic owners still rule the roost.
Looking at office ownership by building size, UK landlords account for 61% of all stock in central London, with North American owners coming in second at 11%, followed by Asia with 9%.
The sale of both the Cheesegrater and Walkie Talkie, EC3, to foreign investors for over £1bn each underlined the global appeal for London offices this year, but behind those recent headline-grabbers is a broad base of in-situ overseas landlords.
Cash from around the world has poured into the capital’s business districts in recent years, but domestic owners still rule the roost.
Looking at office ownership by building size, UK landlords account for 61% of all stock in central London, with North American owners coming in second at 11%, followed by Asia with 9%.
The sale of both the Cheesegrater and Walkie Talkie, EC3, to foreign investors for over £1bn each underlined the global appeal for London offices this year, but behind those recent headline-grabbers is a broad base of in-situ overseas landlords.
Stick a pin in a world map and there is a one-in-three chance you’ll hit a nation state that has some ownership interest in central London offices, with 65 individual nations represented in EG’s analysis.
The most acutely foreign-owned section of London is the Docklands, underpinned by Qatar Investment Authority and Blackstone jointly holding multiple assets as part of their ownership of Canary Wharf Group.
Domestic ownership in the Docklands market is at just 23%, in sharp contrast to the West End, where Grosvenor, British Land, and the Crown Estate’s multiple large-scale assets boost UK office ownership to over 75%.
Domestic owners also hold the majority of City Core stock – but by the slenderest of margins, at 51%.
With ambitious plans from active investors to acquire more London trophy assets, it is almost certain that by this time next year, the City of London will join the Docklands in being majority owned by overseas players.
Methodology
All London office owners (freeholders and long leaseholders) extracted from EG’s London Office Database for buildings measuring 10,000 sq ft or above.
Companies are then given a country of origin, and an applicable world region. The entire square footage of the building applies to all owners – there is no ‘split’ for multiple ownership.
If more than one firm from a world region is present as an owner on a building, it is only attributed to that region once.
For example, a 100,000 sq ft building with two UK owners will only give 100,000 sq ft of ownership to the UK. However, if we record one UK owner and one Middle East owner, then 100,000 sq ft will be attributed to both the UK and the Middle East.
Main image © Jeff Blackler/REX/Shutterstock
