Google in talks to buy $1.4B hub in London

Google is in talks to buy a London office complex for as much as 800 million pounds ($1.4 billion), React News reported, in what would be one of the biggest such deals in the capital this year.

The search giant has entered into negotiations to buy the Central Saint Giles development from joint owners Legal & General Group Plc and Mitsubishi Estate Co., React reported Monday, without saying where it got the information. No deal has been signed. Google already occupies about 40 per cent of the office space in the complex near Tottenham Court Road.

Spokespeople for Legal & General Investment Management and Mitsubishi Estate declined to comment on the article when contacted by Bloomberg News. Representatives of Google couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

Google is in the process of building a new campus in London’s King’s Cross district that will eventually house its 4,500 U.K. employees. The Central Saint Giles deal would give the company flexibility as it finishes that project, for which it has never confirmed completion or move-in dates, according to React.

Alphabet Inc.’s Google was one of the first major corporations to tell employees to work from home when the coronavirus began spreading in March. It said in July that it will let employees do their jobs remotely for another year, pushing back plans to reopen offices.

Land Securities Group Plc, one of the U.K.’s biggest real estate companies, signalled confidence in the future of London offices in a strategy set out Monday by new chief executive officer Mark Allan. The company plans to sell assets including its leisure properties and reinvest the proceeds in developing new offices and mixed-use projects.