Facebook parent Meta is continuing a dramatic scale back of its global offices footprint by leaving its London West End headquarters at German landlord Deka's Rathbone Square.
The decision forms part of a drive that last year saw the social media giant pay British Land £149 million to break a lease at 1 Triton Square in London, a building it never occupied.
According to Deadline, which revealed the decision, Meta told staffers about the change in December. In a statement supplied to CoStar News, a Meta spokesperson said: "We're looking forward to consolidating our teams at Rathbone Square into our recently opened King’s Cross campus and our newly expanded Brock Street office."
It added that there would not be any reduction in UK staff numbers because of the Rathbone Square office closure, following a major reduction in staff headcount throughout last year globally.
Meta leases all 272,443 square foot at the building, which was developed by GPE, on a lease running until 2032. It has not said whether it will seek a sublease or pay Deka to break the lease. It is understood that Meta is being advised by Cushman & Wakefield on the disposal of its lease.
The entire 419,700-square-foot mixed-use development was sold by GPE to Deka in 2017 for £435 million with a 15-year prelet in place with Facebook for the offices for an initial annual rent of £17.8 million.
Meta announced in December 2022 it was exiting close to 700,000 square feet of offices in London and Dublin as it pushed on with a major scaling-back of its giant global real estate portfolio.
In a statement supplied to CoStar News at the time Meta confirmed: "Our commitment to being a distributed-first company has provided us flexibility in our ways of working. We are also making focused, balanced investments that support our most strategic long-term priorities.
"As part of the ongoing review of our sites globally, we have decided to sublet the Triton Square office [London] and the final phase of the Ballsbridge campus [Dublin]. We remain firmly committed to the UK and Ireland. In early 2023, employees based in our Grand Canal office will move to our existing campus in Ballsbridge, which will be the primary location of our International HQ.”
In London, the social media giant had decided not to move to the 310,000-square-foot office building it had recently leased at British Land's 1 Triton Square in Euston.
Facebook also occupies adjoining offices at the British Land Regent’s Place estate including around 310,000 square feet at 10 Brock Street and space at 10-20 Triton Street, as well as a massive nearby office campus at King’s Cross Central.
Meta also decided against moving to Fibonacci Square, the 375,000-square-foot headquarters being developed for it by Johnny Ronan’s RGRE as part of its European headquarters campus in Ballsbridge, Dublin 4.
Meta had been looking to dump large amounts of its real estate globally for some time and in October of 2022 said it was facing a potential €2 billion financial loss as part of its programme of office closures and lease terminations due to revenue slowdown.
The company has joined many of its Silicon Valley peers in making deep cuts to real estate portfolios by shutting down office locations, subleasing unwanted space, terminating prelease agreements and walking away from future investments.