It has been recently announced that the FTSE 100 telecoms group has sold off its London head office in order to help fund investments elsewhere.
The deal will see the London headquarters move from next to St.Paul’s Cathedral to a new office location elsewhere in London. The BT centre will instead belong to a fund that is being managed by the London-based Orion Capital Managers.
BT intends to lease building
As part of the agreement made between the BT Group and Orion Capital Managers, the former intends to lease back the 300,000 square foot building whilst it is in the process of moving its London headquarters to another location in the capital. This lease period of the building could last for up to 30 months in total.
Where will the new BT building be located?
At this moment in time, the BT Group has yet to announce the brand new location of its headquarters. However, it has been revealed that this move is part of a much larger plans for the organisation.
For example, BT is intending to dramatically decrease the number of offices it has across the country, reducing from over 300 sites to just over 30 overall. This will also lead to a large number of job losses: it is anticipated that over 13,000 positions will be cut.
Fibre broadband investment for BT
Alongside these plans to sell off and lease the current London headquarters, the BT Group also has plans for huge investment in the not so distant future: rolling out fibre broadband across the UK.
But how will the BT Group fund this investment?
The chairman of the BT Group, Jan du Plessis, told BT shareholders earlier this month that the company was thinking about reducing the dividend within the next one to two years. It has also been recently been reported that to provide an injection of funds in the near future, BT may look at selling of its Spanish business.