New York City is in such a bad way these days – a replay of the mid-1970s crisis in spades, that those that still live and work there will welcome the news that any major company wants to move in, even if the newcomer highlights the relentless march of the Japanese on the New York property market: Sony Corp has signed a 20-year lease on and bought an option to buy outright AT&T Co’s Midtown headquarters building on Madison Avenue for its 2,500 Manhattan employees; AT&T will disperse its 1,100 employees in the building to cheaper offices around the city, but has not decided on a new headquarters building; underlining the depressed state of the city’s property market, Sony is getting one year rent-free, and AT&T has let the building go despite having to repay the city $14.8m in local tax breaks it received in 1987 for agreeing to keep at least 1,000 staff at the site.
