Farewell to the “tower of doom”, hello to views of St Paul’s. One suspects a majority of the 8,000 inhabitants of HSBC’s 42-storey global head office in Canary Wharf will be delighted by the prospect, in late 2026, of a move westwards to a redeveloped former BT building near the cathedral. A sterile life in docklands, as HSBC staffers’ nickname for their office indicates, has never been everybody’s cup of tea.
For Canary Wharf Group (CWG) – these days jointly owned by Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund and the Canadian developer and property owner Brookfield – HSBC’s looming exit is undoubtedly a blow. While the bank’s building itself isn’t owned by CWG (it was bought by Qatar Investment Authority alone in 2014), the departure of a name that has been on the skyline for two decades sends a signal about the way the wind is blowing in London’s office market.
