Amazon expands UK headquarters

london — Amazon.com Inc is expanding the size of its new UK headquarters to support the growth of its Prime Video service in Europe.

The world’s largest online retailer will occupy the entire 15 floors of the newly constructed tower on the edge of the City of London, after initially having planned to only take 11. The additional space will house 450 new research and development recruits for its on-demand movie service.

“The UK is a fantastic place to find talent and we feel good about building a global R&D center here,” Doug Gurr, head of Amazon’s UK business, said at the opening of the site. “We’re very confident we’ll be able to recruit everyone we need.”

Amazon joins a list of large US tech firms, including Snap Inc, Facebook Inc and Google, in doubling down on London expansion plans ahead of the UK’s departure from the European Union. As investment banks plot relocating some operations away from the City of London, landlords are overhauling workspace historically occupied by financial firms in a bid to attract tech companies.

Amazon is expanding its space in the new building, which features a roof garden and surrounded by new cafes and restaurants, amid nervousness in the property market created by uncertainty over the nature of the U.K.’s divorce from the EU. London office vacancies climbed to 5.8 per cent at the end of the first quarter from 3.9 per cent a year earlier, the biggest increase since 2009, according to Deloitte LLP.

Amazon made Prime Video available as a standalone service in April last year as part of its strategy of retaining customers by acquiring the rights to movies and TV shows, or producing them on its own.