Office space in Bank is centred around Bank Station and Bank Junction in the City of London, which are named after the Bank of England, the dominant institution in the vicinity and the foundation of the United Kingdom’s financial industry.
The Bank of England was established in 1694 and has been situated on Threadneedle Street since the 1730s, earning it the nickname ‘The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street’. Remodelled in the 1930s, it houses 300,000 square feet of vaults holding 400,000 gold bars. It holds 310 tonnes of gold for the United Kingdom, equating to a value of approximately £18 billion as of 2024, as well as gold for other countries. In total, within its walls is a fifth of all the gold in the world.
It is the United Kingdom’s central bank and the world’s eighth-oldest bank. The oldest bank in the world is the Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena S.p.A. (BMPS), which can trace its history to an institutional pawnbroker founded in 1472 in Siena and established in its present form in 1624 in Florence. The Bank of England is the world’s second-oldest central bank after Sweden’s Sveriges Riksbank, established in Stockholm in 1668.
Bank Junction is the major road junction in the City of London, named after the bank that fronts it. The nine streets that converge at the junction are Threadneedle Street (northeast, towards Bishopsgate), Cornhill (east, towards Leadenhall Street), Lombard Street (southeast, towards Gracechurch Street), Mansion House Place (south, running to the east of Mansion House), Walbrook (south, towards Cannon Street), Queen Victoria Street (southwest, towards Blackfriars), Poultry (west, towards Cheapside), Mansion House Street (west, leading to Poultry and Queen Victoria Street), Princes Street (northwest, towards Moorgate) and King William Street, which begins just south of the junction, leading off Lombard Street.
Directly underneath the junction is one of the entrances to Bank station, one of the busiest stations on the London Underground network.
The station opened in 1900 and is served by five lines of the London Underground system – the Central, Northern, Waterloo & City lines and the Docklands Light Railway (DLR).
Substantial upgrade and expansion works to Bank Station were completed in 2023, including a new entrance for financial, software, data, and media company Bloomberg, which was completed in the late 2010s.
Bloomberg’s London headquarters offices at 3 Queen Victoria Street, to the west of Walbrook, were completed in 2017.
The site was previously occupied by Bucklersbury House. The new 10-storey building, Bloomberg Place, cost £1 billion to develop and was designed by internationally acclaimed architects Foster + Partners.
During the construction of Bucklesbury House, the unexpected discovery of the Roman Temple of Mithras, dating back to London AD 240, in the basement was made.
The former site consisted of two blocks built upon properties that had been badly damaged during World War II. The blocks were separated by a road that followed the ancient Watling Street, an ancient route that was later improved by the Romans and ran from Dover through London to Wales.
The developers of Bloomberg Place restored the impression of two separate blocks and created a covered footpath between the two along the line of the lost road, thus restoring the ancient walkway.
The new Bloomberg entrance at Bank Station incorporates etched glass panels that depict figures based on the ancient Roman history of the area, including the Roman Temple of Mithras.
With the area’s ancient heritage and its significance in establishing London as one of the most powerful financial centres in the world, it is not difficult to see why businesses, institutions, and organisations choose to rent office space in Bank.
In addition to Bloomberg, high-profile occupiers in the area include others from the banking and financial services, professional services, and technology, media, and telecom (TMT) sectors.
With these comes a vast array of world-class amenities and facilities to serve them, including The Ned Hotel, which opened in 2017. This was once the HQ for Midland Bank, dating back to 1924, and is the reason the 5-star hotel has a substantial safe in its basement.
Businesses can choose from a wide range of premium office spaces to rent in Bank on traditional leased terms and can also choose from a growing selection of luxury flexible office space and workspace options.
Also known as flex spaces, many high-end office providers and workspace operators offer agile business space solutions such as private serviced offices, managed office suites and floors, and coworking spaces.
In contrast to renting office space in Bank on a long-term lease, these options are occupied by short-term extendable contracts, allowing a business to expand within a building as business needs dictate.
These office spaces in Bank also offer the additional benefit of providing all-inclusive rental pricing. The once-monthly fee covers rent, utilities, furnishings, cleaning, secure enterprise-grade IT, and other items such as reception, business support, and concierge services.
The options offer best-in-class space that is sustainable and ESG-considered and provides first-class amenities such as coffee bars, lounges, meditation rooms, showers and cycle storage.