Lord Sugar sees his office portfolio ‘suffering’ as staff stay at home

Lord Alan Sugar has said his central London property investments are "suffering" due to office workers staying home and City-based companies finding out they "don't need" pre-pandemic size premises.

The billionaire is a long-term investor in prime City property through real estate venture Amsprop. The vehicle was behind the redevelopment of The Crosspoint near Liverpool Street Station, and its portfolio includes The Lever Building near Barbican.

The Apprentice star told the Standard: "As a landlord, we are suffering with our tenants struggling to justify the premises that they occupy.

"We are trying to be mutually reasonable with them and help them out with any kind of payment plans that they can have.

"A lot of companies, big companies in the City, to be perfectly blunt about it, have found out that they don't need these premises because they've been doing business with their employees sitting at home on their computers. Particularly the City boys, they're doing transactions - buying, selling, dealing, all of that stuff - and it's suddenly dawned upon them that business is just as good, but actually we are paying massive rents for premises which really we don't need.”

Lord Sugar said the City is already starting to see “consequences” of that realisation.