(March 20): Lloyd’s Register, the maritime society formed in a London coffee house in 1760, has put its modern glass headquarters up for sale as it prepares to move back into the property built to house it more than a century ago.

The group, which provides classification and compliance services to the shipping industry, appointed broker CBRE Group Inc to offer 70 Fenchurch Street for sale, seeking bids of about £90 million (RM517.96 million), according to a sales brochure seen by Bloomberg News. The property, known as the Rogers Building after the architect who designed it, spans more than 200,000 sq ft (18,581 sq m) across 14 storeys, the sales materials show. 

The society will vacate its remaining space in that office later this year and move into the neighbouring Collcutt Building, originally completed in 1901 and also known as the Lloyd’s Register Building. 

“Lloyd’s Register has a long and important history associated with the Lloyd’s Register Building and we are delighted to be returning to it as our London headquarters later this year,” a spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “All colleagues based at our current London HQ, the Rogers Building, will move across to the Lloyd’s Register Building, which has been undergoing refurbishment and modernisation.”  

CBRE is marketing the property as an opportunity to overhaul the landmark building to create modernized office space at a time when there is little new supply, a spokesperson for the broker said. 

London’s office market has seen anaemic activity since interest rates started rising in 2022. Central London office investment totaled just £6.4 billion last year, a marginal recovery from the post-financial-crisis low seen in 2023, according to data compiled by broker Savills plc. Anticipating a long-stalled recovery, some owners of trophy London office properties are preparing a raft of sales.

Lloyd’s Register is not related to the nearby insurance market, Lloyd’s of London, but it does share some history, including the eponymous coffee house where they were both founded. 70 Fenchurch Street was designed by the late Richard Rogers, whose other projects included the Lloyd’s building on Leadenhall Street, known for its inside-out design. 

In the decades after completing the Collcutt Building in 1901, Lloyd’s Register bought six adjacent office blocks to accommodate its growing business. The company eventually moved into 70 Fenchurch Street in the late 1990s. 

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