Exclusive-JPMorgan Weighs London Hq Options as It Outgrows Canary Wharf Tower, Sources Say

By Iain Withers

LONDON (Reuters) -JPMorgan is assessing options for its European headquarters in London as the fast-expanding Wall Street bank outgrows its existing tower in London’s Canary Wharf financial district, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The bank has begun examining options for where to base around 12,000 staff in London, with a decision likely to be made some time after U.S. staff move into their new global headquarters in New York next year, the sources said.

JPMorgan’s European headquarters has been at 25 Bank Street since 2012, after it acquired the tower from collapsed rival Lehman Brothers following the global financial crisis.

Like other U.S. investment banks, JPMorgan under CEO Jamie Dimon has been pushing for employees to return to the office after the COVID-19 pandemic. That, combined with growing headcount at the bank and its British retail subsidiary Chase UK, has increased the urgency of needing more space.

Its current office at Bank Street, a 33-storey tower with 1.1 million square feet, is full up, one of the sources said.

The bank could require as much as 1.5-2.0 million sq ft of space in London in future, another of the sources said.

JPMorgan is considering three options – upgrading 25 Bank Street, building a new tower in Canary Wharf on land it already owns, or relocating to central London – the sources said.

Its deliberations will be closely watched by the property industry.

Leaving Canary Wharf is the least likely option given the sheer amount of office space required, two of the sources said.

The bank has begun drawing up plans to spend potentially hundreds of millions of pounds upgrading its existing office, two separate sources said.

No final decisions have been made and any move could take years to execute, the sources said, speaking anonymously while discussing confidential plans.

JPMorgan and Canary Wharf Group, which manages the east London financial district, declined to comment.

Canary Wharf has seen several high profile departures since the pandemic, including HSBC, which is moving to a much smaller office in the central City of London district. HSBC is now concerned the new building will be too small and is considering taking additional space in another building, Bloomberg News has reported.

One of the options being considered by JPMorgan is building an entirely new office at a vacant plot to the west of the Canary Wharf estate, known as Riverside South, which it acquired in 2008, two of the sources said. JPMorgan previously got planning permission for a new devlopment there, but shelved the idea.

Any move to the City of London would be difficult as few sites could accommodate the size of building required, but landowners could get creative to secure such a prized tenant, two of the sources said.

A 1.5 million sq ft building would be roughly twice the size of UBS’s 700,000 sq ft ‘groundscraper’ building in the Broadgate area of the City of London, one of the largest investment bank offices in the central district.

JPMorgan’s asset management business will stay at its base by the Thames in London’s Blackfriars area regardless of the decision on the Canary Wharf office, two of the sources said.

(Reporting by Iain WithersEditing by Tommy Reggiori Wilkes and Elaine Hardcastle)