http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthrea ... st18999181
You will have noticed this article.
Also in case some of you don't know Perth Lord Mayor, Lisa Scaffaldi is a SkyscraperCity.com member.Perth mayor drops BHP HQ relocation bomb
Mark Hawthorne
March 13, 2008
IT'S a rumour that has run rampant through town for the past year - that BHP Billiton will effectively shut up shop on Lonsdale Street and relocate it's head office to Perth, severing a 123-year-old link with Melbourne.
For the past year BHP Billiton has vehemently denied that it plans to shift its HQ across the Nullarbor - but now the Lord Mayor of Perth, Lisa Scaffaldi, has announced that the move is a done deal.
Scaffaldi says BHP Billiton will move its head office to Perth's city centre in 2012.
At a Perth City Council meeting on Monday night, approval was granted for a 72,000 square metre skyscraper at 125 St Georges Terrace, a site better known as City Square.
At that meeting Scaffaldi said: "BHP will be headquartering in Perth, and their Melbourne operations will be significantly downgraded - a major boon for the city."
Scaffaldi followed up with a statement issued on the City of Perth website yesterday: "It is so exciting to see this new building proposed for such a significant city site and the fact that BHP is choosing to headquarter here in Perth is also very significant."
After dropping the relocation bomb on BHP Billiton's Melbourne staff, Scaffaldi yesterday flew to New Zealand for a week-long trip, leaving her media team to clean up the mess.
"I think the views of the Lord Mayor about the location of BHP's headquarters may not be the same as those held by BHP," said her press officer, Peter Jackson. "I think what she meant was that, in numbers, there will be more people in BHP's Perth office than in Melbourne."
But Jackson confirmed that Scaffaldi "held the view" that Perth would be the new home of BHP's official headquarters.
Negotiations over the building site between Perth council, BHP Billiton and property developer Multiplex have been going for more than a year.
In December, BHP Billiton signed the biggest office leasing deal in Perth's history. It originally agreed to let 40,000 sq m of office space in the building but, just before Christmas, increased that to a massive 60,000 sq m.
At the time the West Australian newspaper reported a BHP spokesman saying the company's move to secure extra space at City Square did not relate to plans to move its head office to Perth, or its proposed $400 billion merger with mining giant Rio Tinto.
Last year BHP Billiton told BusinessDay that changes were under way and that an "unspecified number of roles" in the Melbourne head office were being shifted to Perth.
Rumours persist among the company's 600-odd staff in Melbourne that chief executive Marius Kloppers is intent on shifting BHP's headquarters closer to key mining assets in WA, and that job numbers in Melbourne could be cut to as few as 150 in coming years.
But London-based BHP Billiton spokesman Illtud Harri told Bloomberg today that the claims were flase. ''Melbourne remains our head office,'' Harri said.
Just last week BHP Billiton chairman Don Argus moved to quash rumours of a move west.
"Our heritage is Australia, our headquarters are in Melbourne and we are proud to be here," he told a seminar held by the Australian Shareholders Association at RMIT.
BHP Billiton spokeswoman Samantha Evans said there were no plans to move the company's headquarters west. "Obviously Perth is a significant location for our business. Our iron ore division is headquartered there. We will have 2500 staff working there. But Melbourne is where the headquarters will remain."
Images of the planned building have been posted on the website of Sydney-based architects fitzpatrick + partners, which has designed the building in partnership with the architects Hassell.
The artist's impression of the site includes the BHP Billiton logo built into a tower at the top of the 46-level building.
At present the City Square site is little more than a hole in the ground, and has been one of Perth's most notorious building sites, nicknamed the "duck pond" after the wildlife that has made the prime real estate home.
Images of BHP's new office were first posted on the website http://www.skyscrapercity.com - the site of a group of Australian "skyscraper spotters".
http://business.theage.com.au/perth-may ... ntentSwap1
