In summer 2007, French bank Societe Generale drew up plans for a stylish glass building to house 3,500 traders at the foot of its twin-tower headquarters in La Defense, the business district of west Paris.
The five-storey block of trading floors, each the size of half a soccer pitch, will open its doors later this year, but the bank will struggle to fill the 250 million euro ($309 million) structure since the intervening financial crisis forced it to cut 880 jobs in France.
"It's been such a saga," said one SocGen trader who is destined to move in. "We've been told that we may end up simply having to rent it out, or put in a gym if we can't fill it."
SocGen declined to comment.
The building's fate is indicative of a wider malaise across Europe's financial centres as banks, under pressure from shareholders to cut bloated balance sheets, slash jobs and reconsider the cost of occupying prime locations.
Rival Credit Agricole will move about 5,600 investment banking staff from a La Defense tower on the river Seine to the lender's HQ in the leafy but unfashionable Parisian suburb of Montrouge, where rents are 61 percent cheaper.
For the same reason, SocGen, which has 25,000 employees in La Defense, will cut numbers to 14,000, shifting 5,500 people to the eastern Paris suburb of Fontenay-sous-Bois by 2016.
Vacancy rates in La Defense have risen to 6.7 percent in the first half from 6.3 percent last year, real estate broker DTZ said. Annual rents for the best offices fell from 600 euros per square metre at the start of 2011 to 550 euros in the second quarter of 2012, property consultant CBRE said.
"A lot of La Defense office towers are going to empty out," said Alexis Motte, CEO of real estate advisor Mobilitis.
LOOKING TO LET
London is also headed for a "significant contraction" in banking space, according to a report this year by property consultant Cushman and Wakefield, which said capital ratio requirements set out in Basel III banking rules would force banks to cut property costs.
It surveyed 107 banks and financial companies and found a third would cut space within a year, while 54 percent were "very likely" to sub-let.
They will be lucky to find tenants.
Japanese bank Nomura is still seeking occupiers for a prestigious building near the London Stock Exchange it called home before a deal to buy the European operations of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 forced it to find bigger premises.
Rents for the best offices in London's main financial district have been flat at 55 pounds per square foot for more than 18 months. Meanwhile, July's vacancy rate was 7 . 4 percent, t he highest since the end of 2009 and edging upwards, CBRE said.
In east London's Canary Wharf district, home to the biggest number of bankers in Europe, Bank of America is considering removing back-office staff to its campus in the northwest English city of Chester, where average rents are about half, two people familiar with the bank's plans said.
Though no decision has been taken and might not happen for several years, it would fit within a wider cost-cutting plan, phase one of which began in 2011 to save $5 billion a year and cut 30,000 jobs by the end of 2014.
A Bank of America spokesman declined to comment.
Elsewhere, Citigroup, which has a nearby 45-storey tower in Canary Wharf, has been busy recruiting staff in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where prime office rents are about a third of those in Canary Wharf.
Though the bank opened in Belfast before the crisis, it was unlikely to have announced as many new jobs, including 500 in November 2010, without the drive for lower costs, a source familiar with the bank's plans told Reuters.
Economic conditions are considered alongside "the availability of talent, relationships with universities and proximity to business partners" when recruiting or expanding, a Citigroup spokeswoman told Reuters.
Even London hedge funds are looking at cheaper options beyond the glitzy streets of London's West End.
SELLING UP
Banks in Frankfurt are not under the same sort of pressure due to the lower numbers of investment bankers and traders in a city long considered dull in banking terms. There, indeed, the vacancy rate has actually fallen to 13 percent from 15 percent in 2006, BNP Real Estate data showed.
There is also less flexibility to move as banks including Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank own rather than rent their Frankfurt HQs, directly or through funds.
Others are offloading real estate to raise cash. Credit Suisse last month announced plans to raise 500 million Swiss francs ($514 million) by selling property under a plan to move some jobs to large out-of-town complexes such as the Uetlihof building near Zurich where 8,000 employees work.
Earlier this year the bank received about 330 million pounds from the sale-and-leaseback of its Canary Wharf office to Qatari investors.
Office landlords are trying to prevent banks fleeing the priciest locations by accommodating their new-found frugality, said Martin Jepson, a UK-based senior vice president at Canadian-American developer Brookfield.
The company is one of the world's biggest office owners, including New York's World Financial Center and a 22 percent stake in Canary Wharf Group. Despite the weak London market, Brookfield bought a string of office blocks from developer Hammerson for 518 million pounds in June.
"Banks want more efficient and flexible buildings," said Jepson, citing the ability to sub-divide floor space and maximise the number of workers per square foot through better design and greater use of 'hot-desking', where multiple users share a desk at different times rather than each having a dedicated workstation.
London-based banks are more hamstrung than their rivals as many are locked into leases of 25 years or more, more than twice the typical length in mainland Europe, said Simon Wainwright, managing director of consultant J Peiser Wainwright.
Leases signed today, however, would more likely be for 10 or 15 years as banks want to keep their options open, he said.
How times have changed.
"Nat West built a skyscraper in the shape of its logo, and the words 'Midland Bank' are still emblazoned in stone on its former London building," Wainwright said. Nat West is now part of RBS, while HSBC bought Midland Bank in 1992.
"The psychology was different when banks did these sorts of things. They thought they would be around forever."
