Building Blocks

Twentytwo was billed as one of the biggest office towers in Europe. Overlooking he Bank of England, it would be built right in the heart of London’s main financial district—and amid all the uncertainty over rexit. So how’s that working out?

- Jack Sidders

IT WAS A TRICKY TIME for the commercial real estate business in London. Within days, Britons would be voting on whether to remain in the European Union or leave. The French insurance giant Axa SA was trying to figure out how the outcome would affect its investments across the Channel. Paris-based executives of Axa Investment Managers’ Real Assets unit held a series of conference calls with their London colleagues to plan for what to do in the event of a leave vote.

One executive on the line from London—Harry Badham, Axa’s head of U.K. real estate development—had a lot at stake. He was about to sign a construction contract that would launch Twentytwo, a £1 billion ($1.3 billion) project to build the tallest skyscraper in the City of London. Unlike his colleagues, however, Badham was relaxed about the outcome. He was going to be out of town the day after the June 23, 2016, vote, having booked a trip in the expectation that remain would win. “When I told them I was planning to go fishing that day,” he says, “they thought I was joking.”

So the morning after, as harried traders in the City of London hunched over screens displaying the damage wrought on the pound by the surprise vote to leave, Badham was 70 miles away on the peaceful chalk banks of the River Test.

Unsurprisingly, his phone lit up. The project’s investors—a global consortium of sovereign and pension funds—wanted to know what the shocking result would mean for them. After all, this was supposed to be one of the largest office buildings in Europe, and it was going up in London’s financial district: Brexit ground zero.