Once a thriving dock serving London, the bustling focal point of world trade in the 19th century, Canary Wharf is now Britain's fastest growing business district, 2nd in size to only the City of London itself.

The idea to transform the disused docks into a new financial district was devised in 1981 by the then Secretary of State for the Environment, Michael Heseltine, who formed the London Docklands Development Corporation. On May 11th, 1988 then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, broke ground on the site. Today less than 20 years on, the Canary Wharf Estate comprises over 14,000,000 square feet of commercial space, including 33 office buildings, housing approximately 80,000 employees, 4 retail centres and a further 20 acres of landscaped open spaces.

The first tenants moved into Canary Wharf in 1991 and now, in addition to Canary Wharf Group itself, there are over 60 companies with offices there, among them are:

Allen & Overy
Bank of America
Barclays plc
Bear Stearns International
BP plc
ChevronTexaco Ltd
Citigroup
Coutts & Co
Credit Suisse
The Financial Services Authority
FTSE
HSBC
KPMG
Lehman Brothers
Morgan Stanley
Reuters
Telegraph Group Ltd

In addition to the award winning layout of the estate and its superb architecture, Canary Wharf attracts these world-class companies as it has proved to be a more cost effective location than the City, and is extremely well connected. The estate's Underground station, 2 Docklands Light Railway stations and close proximity to London City Airport ensure that travel between Canary Wharf and other areas of the Capital, the UK and indeed Europe is easy.

Situated 3 miles to the East of the Bank of England, the Canary Wharf Estate is spread over 97 acres, and there is currently another 1.5 million square feet of space available for development. Added to this existing space, local planners have granted planning permission for another 3 million square feet, Canary Riverside South, while a further 4 million is currently being considered at North Quay.

Also, directly adjacent to Canary Wharf is Wood Wharf, which is currently under construction and will add a further 4 million square feet of space. If all of this space is fully utilised over the coming decade, Canary Wharf will almost double in size. It will certainly need to grow to accommodate the 200,000 workers that are projected to be employed in Canary Wharf by 2026. Canary Wharf sits within the Thames Gateway, seen as Europe's largest regeneration project.