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Netflix Triples London Office Space With New Headquarters

Netflix is moving into a new London headquarters tripling the amount of its West End office space.

Netflix Triples London Office Space With New Headquarters
A Netflix Inc. logo sits on the online television streaming company’s exhibition area in Cologne, Germany. (Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg)

Netflix Inc. is moving into a new London headquarters that will triple the amount of its West End office space, as the streaming giant expands the production of television shows in the U.K.

The producer of programs including “The Crown” is taking over the lease on an 87,000 square-foot (8,082 square-meter) office building on Berners Street from current occupant Capita Plc, according to people with knowledge of the deal who asked not to be identified because the information is private.

Netflix, which has 269 employees in the U.K., currently rents about 30,000 square feet of space in two nearby buildings, one of which will be retained, one of the people said. The changes will give the company a total of about 100,000 square feet of office space in the capital.

“As part of our ongoing commitment to the U.K., we are excited to expand our operations in London,” a Netflix spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “It will ensure that we can better serve our members and the local creative community.”

Netflix Co-Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings is no fan of remote working, which has prompted questions about the outlook for commercial workspace since the onset of Covid-19. He said in a Wall Street Journal interview last month that not being able to get together in person, especially internationally, is a “pure negative.” A lot of companies will end up having employees work four days a week in the office and one from home, he said.

Remote Work

The company added almost as many subscribers in the first half of this year as it achieved in the whole of 2019, as consumers enduring widespread lockdowns reached for their remotes. The company’s shares are up more than 60% this year.

Technology firms have become a vital source of demand for London offices, which have seen demand hit by Brexit and the pandemic. Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Facebook Inc. and Google owner Alphabet Inc. have all signed deals for major new headquarters in the city in the past few years, surpassing banks as the dominant source of demand for trophy office developments.

Capita, a business-process outsourcing firm, is giving up the lease on the Berners Street building as its employees spend more time working from home, according to an emailed company statement. It will shift its headquarters to its offices on Gresham Street in the City of London.

“It is clear our colleagues want to work in a more flexible way, which will involve increased working from home, but they will still spend a significant amount of their time working from offices that are based in their local towns and cities,” a spokesperson said in the statement.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.