BUSINESS NEWS

TUPNews recently visited the Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein building on 20 Fenchurch St to attend a presentation on climate change and the financial sector. The chief executive of the WWF was there, as was Joachim Faber, CEO of Allianz and the 14th most important person in European finance. To the amusement of all, the presentation packs doled out to journalists were made of thick, non-biodegradable plastic.

The view from the 21st floor briefing room is fantastic. Positioned on the corner of the building, the south-facing vista stretches from Tower Bridge to Waterloo Bridge, where the river starts to bend. From the west-facing window, one can see over most of the City of London, and on as far as Centre Point and the BT Tower. The quality of office building is surprising given that DrKW is a second-tier German bank; its other London office is rubbish.

European banks sometimes make odd decisions about where to set up their London offices. For some reason, they seem to believe that a location becomes more prestigious the closer it is to the river. The other DrKW office is a grey monstrosity on Swan Lane, just to the west of London Bridge on the north bank of the Thames, and actually has a small marina out front. But in the City of London, the closer you are to the river, the more inaccessible your office is. Take Societe Generale’s massive London headquarters in Tower Hill; “opposite Tower Bridge and the Tower of London on the banks of the Thames” must have sounded great on the brochure, but the reality is an inoffensive but average-looking building in an isolated location hemmed in by the massive traffic system around Tower Bridge. Equally, DrKW’s Swan Lane office is essentially down a back street, and the grubby little marina looks pitiful. The big boys like UBS and JPMorgan know that when it comes to the City, it’s all about proximity to Liverpool Street Station.

(Major, major international players like Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and HSBC are all at Canary Wharf, as are Barclays Capital, Lehman Brothers, Bank of America, Credit Suisse and Coutts. Hedge funds are too cool for school, however, and prefer to set up shop in the more refined Piccadilly/St. James area.)

The only thing that let down DrKW’s Fenchurch Street office was its retro-futuristic elevator, which could have featured in Back to the Future II. Actually thinking about, it was a highlight.