An Italian technology group arriving in London in 2009, and the same building twice the size sixteen years later.
Transaction facts
| Service | Corporate occupier advisory, acquisition and asset management |
| Location | Grosvenor Gardens, Victoria SW1 |
| Client | Reply SpA |
| Acquired | 38 Grosvenor Gardens, 2009 |
| Extended | 36 Grosvenor Gardens, 2021 |
| Ongoing | Asset management and rent review advice |
The brief
Reply is an Italian technology and consulting group, and in 2009 it needed a London headquarters. The requirement was not simply floor space. A headquarters is the address a company gives its clients, the room its people arrive at every morning, and a building it will still be in when the business has changed shape twice over. It had to be right on the first count and durable on the second.
What we did
We acquired 38 Grosvenor Gardens, in Victoria, and then stayed with the building. We advised on its asset management and ran a full refurbishment, so the space matched what the business was becoming rather than what it had been when the search started.
When Reply outgrew it, we did not start again. In 2021 we secured 36 Grosvenor Gardens, the building next door, doubling the headquarters on the same address rather than relocating it — a move that preserves the thing a headquarters is for. We also advise the group on rent review at Nova Victoria.
The result
Sixteen years with the same client, in the same place, on twice the footprint. Corporate occupiers are usually advised transaction by transaction, by whoever is available at the time. Advising one client across the whole life of a building — the purchase, the refurbishment, the expansion next door, the reviews — is how the small decisions stay consistent with the large one.