Hongkong Bank helps lead Canary Wharf revival
After bankrupting its original builders and being dismissed as a white elephant in the early 1990s, Canary Wharf is now seen as London's most important business district.
'Canary Wharf is effectively the pre-eminent banking district [in London] ,' Brendon Robert, director at estate agents Ayelsfords, said.
'The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation is building 41 floors of offices there, Morgan Stanley has 2,700 employees working there, Credit Suisse will have even more and is building an extension.
'BZW and Bear Sterns are there, and Citibank is building its own office block there.' So far, 10 office buildings, providing 10 million square feet of space, have been built at this massive development on the Isle of Dogs.
A further 10 million sq ft of office, retail and residential space located in an additional 30 buildings is in the pipeline.
The Hongkong Bank will become one of Canary Wharf's biggest residents, when it builds its tower next to One Canada Square, the tallest office block in Europe.
Ten thousand Hongkong Bank employees working in eight separate offices scattered across the City of London will be brought together under one roof, at Canary Wharf, in 2001, at a cost of GBP500 million (about $6.38 billion).
Mr Roberts believed building Canary Wharf had saved London as a financial centre, helping it to fend off the challenge from Frankfurt. 'Canary Wharf has given financial firms somewhere to expand to outside of the City of London, where planning restrictions and the predominance of older, smaller buildings made expansion difficult,' he said.
Changes in technology and business practices meant that finance houses now required large, purpose-built, modern offices which could house under-floor cabling and provide sufficient space for large trading floors.
If Canary Wharf was not there, these firms might have moved to another city, such as Frankfurt, where the authorities were desperate to steal London's mantle as the financial capital of Europe, Mr Roberts said. These views were echoed by the City of London authorities.
