M&G is in talks to lease almost all of the remaining circa 150,000 square feet of offices at its 40 Leadenhall Street office tower in the City of London, finalising a highly successful leasing campaign during a period when there has been much debate over the future of offices.
40 Leadenhall is a 910,000-square-foot office tower designed to be among the UK’s first to achieve the NABERS certification – an energy efficient standard that measures how a building is designed to operate and how it performs in use. It will also be the largest office development to complete in the City of London this year.
It includes a fitness studio, a 22,500-square-foot treatment and changing area, a wellness suite, library and a 30-seat cinema room. Employees will be able to use touchless technology to book spaces at the 200-seat auditorium, two restaurants, 17 outdoor green spaces and terraces and the communal 11th floor rooftop clubhouse.
The tower, alongside nearby recently developed peer 8 Bishopsgate, has leased up strongly despite market jitters around the strength of the office market in the capital since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Recent progress on major lettings in the City suggest a trend for major corporates to relocate to highly sustainable new buildings is gathering momentum.
CoStar News understands the final space at 40 Leadenhall is now close to being leased.
Market sources said Japanese global insurer Sompo is in talks to take around 90,000 square feet at the tower. It is based in around 23,000 square feet in the City at 2 Minster Court.
Separately, Chubb is in talks to take further space, understood to be around 40,000 square feet, after agreeing to lease around 85,000 square feet at the building in 2022.
M&G Prudential bought the site in 2019 from AimCo and Nuveen Real Estate, through its central London offices platform.
Savills, Knight Frank and Cushman & Wakefield are joint agents on 40 Leadenhall, dubbed Gotham City in part because its architects took "mid-century New York" as the template for its design.
CoStar News revealed in September that US law firm Kirkland & Ellis had taken up its option on another 170,000 square feet to complete one of the largest legal prelets in the capital.
The letting means the firm will occupy a total of 385,000 square feet stretching from the top 34th floor to the 15th floor, with the tower due for completion in the second quarter of this year.
CoStar News tipped the transaction would complete alongside a flurry of other lettings to take the building to 70%-plus preleased in August of last year.
Other lettings include: 50,827 square feet, to Acrisure, advised by Newton Perkins, on a 20-year lease; Ark Insurance, the reinsurer based at 30 Fenchurch Avenue, which is taking 22,500 square feet; Shawbrook Bank, a challenger savings and lending bank, which is taking 37,000 square feet on level 10, advised by JLL; McGill & Partners, the reinsurance broker based at 100 Leadenhall Street, which has taken 43,000 square feet on a 16-year lease.