DLA Piper opts to stay at India Buildings
LAW firm DLA Piper has called off its search for a new office in Liverpool and signed a seven-year lease at India Buildings.
No one at DLA was available to comment on the decision but a spokesman confirmed the lease agreement which will take it to 2020.
Six years ago it added 12,000 sq ft to its 28,000 sq ft on a lease which also ends in 2020.
DLA hired GVA to carry out an office search and was expected to follow other law firms to the Old Hall Street area, with St Paul’s Square the most likely choice.
The English Cities Fund scheme is home to Hill Dickinson and DWF, while Weightmans is based at the nearby Plaza building on Old Hall Street after leaving India Buildings early last year.
The 350,000 sq ft block on Water Street was built between 1924 and 1932 for Alfred Holt’s Blue Funnel Line. An earlier incarnation of DLA was one of the original tenants.
The building has been owned by Dublin-based Green Property since 2009 which embarked on a £1.5m refit in June in a bid to attract tenants. Since 2004 the number of people working in the building has fallen from 3,250 to 400.
This was partly due to the Passport Office’s decision to leave in 2005, but the former owners Achilleas Kallakis and Alexander Williams, who acquired the site through their Pacific Group, have been accused of overseeing the building’s decline.
They were jailed for seven and five years respectively in January after duping bank Allied Irish Bank out of £740m. The two men used bogus documents over a five-year period to secure loans. The value of the properties was inflated, letting them siphon off £60m.
Kallakis was handed a further four years in May, and Williams an extra three, after a Government lawyer called on senior judges for a tougher sentence.
