Facebook parent Meta is close to disposing of much of the London West End headquarters space it has recently vacated, CoStar News can reveal.
Facebook parent Meta confirmed earlier this year it was vacating its London West End headquarters at Rathbone Square, continuing a dramatic scale-back of its global office footprint. The building is owned by German landlord Deka.
Last year the social media giant paid British Land £149 million to break a lease at 1 Triton Square in London, a building it never occupied.
CoStar News understands that Monday.com, a cloud-based platform that allows users to create their own applications and that is advised by Savills, is close to agreeing a deal to take 80,000 square feet of the Rathbone Square space. A number of other occupiers, including NBCUniversal, are eyeing the remainder.
Monday.com is based nearby at 20 Rathbone Place. The platform moved into 12,200 square feet owned by managed workspace specialist BE.Spoke in 2022 after it outgrew its space at Great Portland Street.
In a statement supplied to CoStar News previously, a Meta spokesperson confirmed disposal plans at Rathbone Square, saying: "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 job losses because of the Rathbone Square closure, following a major reduction in global headcount last year.
Meta leases all 272,443 square feet of office space at the building, which was developed by GPE, on a lease running until 2032. It is understood that Meta is being advised by Cushman & Wakefield on the disposal of its lease.
Savills and Cushman & Wakefield declined to comment.
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. It is unclear whether the latest deal would involve a sublease or a new lease assignment.
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 London, it decided not to move to the 310,000-square-foot office building at 1 Triton Square in Euston. 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.
Monday.com is a cloud-based platform that allows users to create their own applications and project management software. The product was launched in 2014 and in July 2019 was valued at $1.9 billion. The company went public in June 2021 and is headquartered in Tel Aviv.