Burberry reviews its London offices to cut costs

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Jun 9, 2017

Burberry is believed to be reviewing the future of its London office estate as it seeks to cut costs.

The luxury firm had already announced plans to open an office in Leeds this autumn and had said that over 300 of its 2,000 London-based staff would move there.

But the new move sees it conducting a review of its remaining office space in the UK capital via property agent Cushman & Wakefield. And that office space is quite substantial with 160,000 square feet in Westminster (in its Horseferry House HQ) and another 127,000 square feet not far away in Page Street.

Importantly both of the spaces are in ultra-expensive parts of London and with higher business property taxes adding to the rent load, it’s unsurprising that Burberry is looking to possibly downsize or move to cheaper locations to make savings that will feed through to the bottom line.

Not that Burberry is in trouble or on the ropes. But the company has struggled to turn in strong growth in recent periods and its shareholders will want to see more efforts being made to control the costs that prestige London offices bring with them.