Deutsche Bank makes post-Brexit commitment to City of London with new Moorgate headquarters

Corporate demand for office space in the capital has fallen in the wake of the referendum vote

The German bank is in the process of overhauling its business and expects thousands of jobs to be cut through next year (Reuters)

Deutsche Bank has signed an agreement with Land Securities to move its UK headquarters to a building being constructed in the City of London.

The lender will lease at least 469,000sq ft of the 564,000sq-ft building at 21 Moorfields for 25 years if planning approval is secured, Land Securities said in a filing on Tuesday.

The property is equivalent in size to about 10 football pitches and is expected to be completed in November 2021. A spokeswoman for Land Securities declined to comment on how much rent Deutsche Bank will pay.

Germany’s biggest bank, which employs 7,000 people in 16 buildings across London, is committing to keeping staff in the city despite the Brexit vote and a reorganisation within the lender itself.

Deutsche Bank may shift about €300bn (£270bn) from the balance sheet of its UK entity to Frankfurt as client trading and assets migrate to the continent following Britain’s decision to leave the European Union, a person familiar with the matter said in July.

“We see this as a clear positive for the City,” Osmaan Malik, head of pan-European property research at UBS, said in a note to clients. He said the building will house around 5,000 employees,

A spokesman for Deutsche Bank declined to comment on the number of employees who will move to the new building.

Deutsche Bank already leases the Zig Zag building in Victoria from Land Securities for its asset-management unit. The new headquarters is located directly above London’s Moorgate underground station and will have access to Crossrail, the new railway network that will connect London with Heathrow and Reading in the west, and Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east, when it’s fully completed in 2019.

Corporate demand for office space in the capital has fallen in the wake of the Brexit vote, with BNP Paribas estimating that firms leased 19 per cent less space in central London in 2016 than a year earlier.

Deutsche Bank, which is in the process of overhauling its businesses, said in March that the next phase of its plan will cause additional job losses. In 2015, it predicted that 9,000 jobs would be eliminated through 2018.

Bloomberg