[HN Gopher] Meta pays PS149M to break London office lease
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       Meta pays PS149M to break London office lease
        
       Author : vinnyglennon
       Score  : 20 points
       Date   : 2023-09-26 20:58 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.ft.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.ft.com)
        
       | xdennis wrote:
       | The same story from free sources:
       | 
       | - https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/meta-pays-149m-to-...
       | 
       | - https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2023/09/26/facebook-owne...
       | 
       | - https://news.sky.com/story/facebook-owner-meta-pays-149m-to-...
        
       | version_five wrote:
       | That's an insane amount of money. I can't read the article, it
       | would be very interesting to see the rental costs they backed out
       | of and how much they saved.
        
         | rahimnathwani wrote:
         | Meta had another 18 years on its lease and paid the equivalent
         | of about seven years of rent to get out of the obligation,
         | according to BNP Paribas Exane analysts.
        
           | version_five wrote:
           | Wow. Thanks.
        
         | SilasX wrote:
         | It _is_ an insane amount! I initially assumed it was a case of
         | "ha ha, M means a thousand, silly", but no, the article
         | confirms it's millions, and equal to seven years of rent.
         | 
         | Like, what? The landlord could fail to find another tenant for
         | seven years and still come out ahead.
         | 
         | There are either draconian anti-subleasing provisions, or
         | office rents have plummeted.
        
           | fatfingerd wrote:
           | Seems nuts to me, but CEOs also get an interesting pressure
           | not to effectively be in a second sector through real estate
           | holdings, etc, so even if long term subleasing would have
           | paid off they may not have wanted to.
           | 
           | I guess its that having a lot of assets in a lower alpha
           | sector will dilute the upside in a boom compared to a company
           | that is totally leveraged to have all its value operating in
           | the one sector. Fiscal madness.
        
       | 4gotunameagain wrote:
       | That's probably a good thing for proponents of remote work, since
       | it means that they bit a bullet instead of forcing people to
       | return I guess.
       | 
       | I wonder if things keep going that way, how will downtowns evolve
       | and also how will humans, spending even more and more time in
       | less social environments.
       | 
       | ps https://archive.ph/L3rAS
        
         | gumballindie wrote:
         | They do spend more and more time in more social environments,
         | but with people that actually matter to them, no coworkers.
        
       | jstx1 wrote:
       | Hybrid working and desk sharing is the worst option for getting
       | any actual work done. I'll gladly commute to an office where I
       | have a dedicated desk with good equipment (2 monitors, keyboard
       | etc) but having to work from a laptop without any dedicated space
       | is just horrible.
        
         | Detrytus wrote:
         | Desk-sharing offices still have 2 monitors and keyboard on each
         | desk, you just get to sit in a different spot every time. At
         | least that's how my company does it. (To be fair: my company
         | allows us to work from home full time, hot-desks are there just
         | for those rare occasions when someone needs/wants to come to
         | the office)
        
       | simscitizen wrote:
       | Probably consolidating their London office space. The main UK
       | office is actually at Rathbone.
        
       | fuzzfactor wrote:
       | At this scale they're going to need a huge amount of bigger
       | unwanted expenses and unexpected losses in order to make this
       | seem worthwhile.
        
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       (page generated 2023-09-26 23:01 UTC)