Regus wins £26m of new office contracts

The office space provider Regus has announced a raft of new contracts in Europe and the US worth more than £18m, and said it had won a further £8m of repeat business from existing customers.

Shares in the Surrey-based company, which hires out fully equipped offices and meeting rooms around the world, rose 10 per cent, or 3p, to 33p.

Among the larger deals signed over the past few weeks is a two-year contract with Philip Morris, which sees the US tobacco giant take on space for 235 people in Rome, Italy. The Belgian brewer Interbrew has taken space for 86 people for two years in Leuven, Belgium, while the US firm Spatial has signed a five-year deal for 347 people in Denver, Colorado.

Mark Dixon, Regus's chief executive, said: "These new deals are evidence of a growing trend for large multinationals to undertake the structured outsourcing of office space in preference to long-term conventional leases."

Regus said DMR Consulting, a wholly owned unit of Fujitsu, had signed five-year deals for 60 workstations in Sao Paolo, Brazil, and 135 workstations in Madrid, Spain.

Less than two months ago Regus launched a £40m convertible bond issue after a downturn in the business. In November, it had announced redundancies and staff pay cuts.