Pain in the asset
SOMEONE else with headquarters on the brain is Sir Richard Attenborough. He is chairman of Channel 4, which is feeling the pinch of recession in advertising and pas- sing it, with added pain, to his contractors. Performers, producers and make-up ladies tremble for their jobs, but Sir Richard's new office is secure. Channel 4 has bought itself two acres in Westminster, and has now commissioned what it calls a landmark head office from the Richard Rogers Part- nership, (Their most prominent landmark is the head office — striking, but not exactly economically practical — they de- signed for Lloyd's of London.) Sir Richard says that this is a crucial strategy in safeguarding the future, and that Channel 4 can look forward to sitting on a valuable asset in central London. All it will then have to do, he says, is to pay off its banks. I wonder whether Channel 4 has compared notes with Independent Television News, which bought itself a landmark head office in central London — the Times Newspap- ers building in Grays Inn Road — and now wishes it hadn't. When revenues fall below budget and financing costs soar above it, the result is a serious pain in the asset.
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