Amazon is opening an office for 1,600 staff in central London as the internet retailer seeks to expand its UK business, reports The Guardian.
“This new office location will provide the space we require for hundreds of our existing employees as well as many more that we will hire in the future,” said Christopher North, managing director of Amazon.co.uk.
Several hundred employees are expected to transfer from Amazon’s base in Slough to the 12-storey Holborn office by the end of the year.
The internet giant has been embroiled in a political storm since it emerged that it paid just £3.2m in corporation tax on UK sales of £4.2bn in 2012.
In the Amazon statement the London mayor, Boris Johnson, praised the company’s “ambitious expansion plans”. Social media users preferred wisecracks – “not bad for a small biz from Luxembourg”, read one comment on Twitter – referring to the subsidiary that UK sales are routed through.
Amazon has 6,000 permanent staff in the UK, according to the statement. Last autumn Amazon’s director of public policy, Andrew Cecil, told the public accounts committee that the company had “in excess of 15,000 people”. A spokesman said Amazon had hired more than 10,000 temporary workers for Christmas.
