HSBC has agreed a sale-and-leaseback of its London headquarters for £1.1 billion with a subsidiary of Spanish property firm Metrovacesa.
The deal announced today - a record for a single British building and almost double the price achieved in February for the so-called Gherkin tower in the City of London - also saw HSBC underline its commitment to London as a location.
HSBC said it had agreed a 20-year lease to occupy the 1.1-million-square foot, 210-metre high tower in Canary Wharf, east London, paying an annual rent of £43.5 million to new landlord Metrovacesa for an initial yield of 4 per cent.
HSBC said it also had an option to extend the lease for a further five years on the building, which houses 8,000 of its staff.
Newspaper reports last October said HSBC, Europe's biggest bank, was considering a move away from London for tax reasons - something later denied by HSBC.