8 Canada Square

8 Canada Square is a 45 floor skyscraper in Canary Wharf, London. The building is the global headquarters of HSBC.

Having been commissioned by the owners of the Canary Wharf Site to undertake the outline design prior to gaining site-wide outline planning permission, and because he had designed HSBC's head office in Hong Kong, Norman Foster was appointed as architect. Construction began in January 1999, with work beginning on the installation of the 4,900 glass panels commencing in the summer of 2000. The work was carried out by Canary Wharf Contractors.

The topping out ceremony took place on 7 March 2001, with the hoisting in of the final steel girder attended by bankers, journalists and contractors. The first HSBC employees began work in the building on 2 September 2002, with phased occupation completed by 17 February 2003, and the building's official opening, by Sir John Bond, taking place on 2 April 2003.

In April 2007, HSBC Tower was sold to Spanish property company Metrovacesa, becoming the first building in Britain to be sold for more than £1bn. As part of the sale, HSBC retained occupancy control and agreed a 20-year lease at a cost of £43.5m per annum. In December 2008, after Metrovacesa encountered problems with re-financing the bridging loan that HSBC had provided it and as part of a wider debt restructure for Metrovacesa, the bank bought back the property. HSBC stated it had made a £250m profit on the deal. In November 2009, HSBC once again sold the building, this time to the National Pension Service ("NPS"), the public pension fund for South Korea. HSBC's income statement on completion declared a gain of approximately £350million resulting from the transaction. In December 2014, Qatar Investment Authority completed the purchase of the building at an undisclosed price, but the building was expected to fetch more than £1.1 billion (US$1.73 billion). NPS was advised by the estate agents JLL and GM Real Estate.

In September 2022, a leaked internal memo stated that HSBC was considering whether to renew its lease on the building when it expires in 2027, or whether it would relocate to other premises in London. In February 2023, The Times reported that roughly 10 floors had been mothballed, having embraced home-working. In June 2023, the bank subsequently confirmed its intention to move out of the building by 2027 in favour of a property in the City of London.

On 21 May 2000, three workmen employed by Hewden Tower Cranes were killed in a crane accident when the top of a Wolf Luffing crane snapped off into the adjacent North Colonnade area. An inquest three years later had heard a special safety plug was missing and that there was no anemometer in the crane cab to measure wind speed, although there were no weather problems that day. The three workmen were Michael Whittard who was 36 from Leeds, Martin Burgess who was 31 from Castleford, West Yorkshire, and Peter Clark who was 33, from Southwark in South London. A memorial plaque under a tree opposite 8 Canada Square is in memory of these three men who lost their lives that day.

In the summer of 2003, one year after the completion of the tower, the first incident of a glass panel was recorded when it had fallen from the 42nd floor. This incident was during the early morning hours, and no one was injured. On 9 June 2004, another window panel fell from the plant floor of the tower on the 43rd floor. This had mirrored an almost identical incident a year prior, this time with a reported near miss by a security guard in the afternoon. Another incident was reported seven years later in 2011, when part of the HSBC signage fell off and smashed to the ground. The glass had fallen over 150 m (490 ft) onto the building's western entrance. The North Colonnade area of Canary Wharf wa

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