Vallist, a Singapore-based workspace advisory and management platform founded by the former Americas executive at WeWork, is set to launch the operational arm of its business in London’s Holborn area.
The company, which will focus on operating high-end flexible offices with a hospitality-led design, has signed a 10- year management agreement for 15–17 Furnival Street, known as Finlaison House.
It will occupy the entire 31,000-square-foot property for its first operated flex site, which is set to open in the final quarter of 2025. The building will have dedicated hosts to provide concierge-style assistance and a premium food and beverage offering, including in-office service.
Once the near-£5 million investment into refurbishment is completed on the five-floor building, the site will offer workspace with private office suites for teams of eight to 100, fully managed floors with designated meeting areas and executive boardrooms equipped with advanced AV.
The property is owned by an undisclosed high-net-worth individual. Under the management agreement, Vallist is responsible for building a unique offering that aligns with the building's leasing strategy and overseeing the site’s ongoing operation, it said.
Vallist is founded by chief executive Alex Passler, who formerly held several top roles at WeWork, including global head of franchising and vice president, head of real estate for the Americas.
“We really want the tenants to feel that it's their own space, so we are not branding the space as a flex operator,” Passler told CoStar News. “…we're keeping [it] quite neutral. The same goes for the branding on the building.”
He added: “We've designed this space around small things, like every office has its own internal meeting room, we've spent a lot on sound installation, privacy and all these things that are becoming more important for flexible workspace users. The clientele is shifting from early stage start-ups to more established companies which are looking for it as a more permanent solution and we've designed with that in mind.”
More broadly, the flexible workspace will provide an events programme comprising curated business networking and cultural experiences, as well as offering a focus on health and wellbeing. This will involve a staged implementation of facilities and amenities including a gym.
Membership at the Modus-designed and developed site will be via application only. The project was secured through direct negotiation, without agency representation.
Vallist will use a management agreement model at Finlaison House and its future sites in a bid to create a consistent operating model for the business and to attempt to cater to institutional landlords that are increasingly looking for professional workspace management without giving up control.
The company also plans to add additional UK locations to its portfolio throughout 2026, with the future pipeline poised to spread west from Holborn, with “several sites under negotiation” at locations including Mayfair and St James. This follows increased demand for flex space from occupiers in reaction to unique market conditions including hybrid working policies, high fit-out costs because of interest rates and economic uncertainty.
“When we look at our own business plan and which markets to enter and where to go from there, we've taken a bit of a longer view. We spent, a good year researching what the product should be, where it should be, where it would be best implemented, and taking a lot more of a structured approach to market entry and scaling the business right,” Passler told CoStar News.
“We're looking at having probably five to eight sites in London and they're all going to be around 30 to 40,000 square feet,” he added.
Vallist has a team of 15 working across large advisory projects active in APAC and the Middle East. The company launched operations with a 56,000-square-foot building on Bryant Park in New York in 2022 under the brand Upperhaus, which it has stopped operating the asset. Following this it launched a capital raise for UK market entry.