Major inward investment deal close
MANCHESTER was close to securing its biggest office letting of the year this week, in an inward investment deal that will boost jobs in the city, according to Propertyweek.com.
Aegis, the business process and IT services arm of Indian conglomerate Essar Group, has placed 36,000 sq ft under offer at Bruntwood’s City Tower.
Under the terms of the agreement, Aegis would take the space at around £18.50/sq ft and hopes to double it to 70,000 sq ft over the next four years. The deal is expected to be signed on Thursday.
Its offer is a vote of confidence in Manchester’s economy, where the biggest office letting so far this year was the London School of Business and Finance’s 25,111 sq ft letting at Linley House on Dickinson Street in February.
Aegis invited agents to represent it in April this year. The new office will give Aegis a presence on six continents. It will then commence its Europe-wide roll-out. It employs 55,000 people in 10 countries, most of them working in outsourced call centres.
The European headquarters is likely to create more than 350 jobs in Manchester. The letting is significant because the most talked-about imminent office moves of KPMG and Lloyds Banking Group are not expansions and will not reduce the office vacancy rate, which was 15% in the first quarter.
KPMG has shortlisted prelets at Argent’s One St Peter’s Square, Ask Developments’ Greengate, and Allied London’s Spinningfields, for a planned 65,000 sq ft move, but this is a relocation rather than an expansion.
Lloyds’ long-awaited move to Allied London’s 1 Hardman Square, which is on hold while new chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio decides if it represents value for money, is a consolidation of office space, and will dump offices on the market.
Agents said the Aegis deal would double the amount of high-quality take-up in 2011 so far in Manchester. WHR and Jones Lang LaSalle are letting agents at City Tower.
