Portuguese insurance company Fidelidade and Resolution Property have secured the record office rent of 2025, and one of the highest rents ever paid in London's West End, at the former home of The Economist.
According to Savills' central London office report, American private equity firm Atlas Holdings has taken the 13th floor, or 3,620 square feet, of Smithson Tower at 25 St James’s Street at £240 per square foot. That is the highest rent paid in 2025, a year that saw prime offices across the country shatter rent records, notably in the City of London where Mitsubishi and Stanhope signed law firm Proskauer Rose at £147 per square foot at 8 Bishopsgate.
Savills writes: "With several further strong rents currently under offer across the market, we expect that by year-end, prime rental growth will align with Savills' forecasts of 4% in the West End and 5.5% in the City."
Tishman Speyer sold the Smithson Plaza estate, the mixed-use former The Economist Plaza in London’s West End, to the real estate investment arm of the Portuguese insurance company and Resolution Property in 2021 for a price understood to be close to £160 million or a 4.75% yield.
Fidelidade and Resolution are majority-owned by Fosun, China's largest private conglomerate.
Tishman Speyer bought the estate on behalf of its value-add fund, TSEV VII, in March 2016 from The Economist, which had been in occupation since its development in the 1960s, for around £130 million.
The estate comprises: the 14-storey, 52,000-square-foot Smithson Tower office building; the seven-storey, 11,000-square-foot Denham Building of which 8,500 square feet is residential accommodation; and the five-storey Bank Building which houses 5,000 square feet of offices. The estate also has 13,000 square feet of retail, gallery and restaurant space. The Grade II*-listed complex is architectural duo Alison and Peter Smithson’s last remaining building in London and is the tallest office building in St. ames’s.
Letting agents at Smithson Plaza are Edward Charles & Partners and Colliers.
In its central London office report, Savills says the City office leasing market is seeing a notable shift among occupiers requiring over 100,000 square feet. It says such firms are committing to new space significantly earlier than in previous years, driven by a constrained development pipeline and the need to secure best-in-class offices. Its data shows that the average lead time before lease expiry for these large occupiers has increased steadily.