I&M moves head office to Parklands in August

I&M Bank will move its head office from the Central Business District to Nairobi’s Parklands area in August.

The new age building dubbed 1 Park Avenue, located near City Park, will be part of the real estate investment portfolio of the bank’s property arm I&M Realty.

I&M expects to occupy 2 and a half floors of the seven-floor complex in a shift that will see 15 percent of the lender’s staff moving there, representing about 125 people.

The listed bank declined to disclose the cost of the new investment.

I&M partnered with Spanish construction giant Onyx Solar to construct the building’s skylight that will also act as a solar panel to harness energy which will help the firm save on power costs.

“As part of the tenancy uptake, the bank will also have a branch within the new premises in addition to relocation as well as moving some of its offices,” said general manager of Strategy and Transformation at I&M Shameer Patel in an interview with Business Daily.

“We have a huge skylight…basically this is a glass roof. Traditionally, you would put glass or you would put polycarbonate because you want to see through and you want light to come through,” said Mr Patel.

“In this case it (solar power harnessing technology) is embedded in the skylight so you still get the full clarity you can see the sky…but at the same time it is generating power for you so it is called Building Integrated Photovoltaic glass roof,” said Mr Patel.

The installation will be Onyx Solar’s third in Africa, and has the potential to generate 111,359 KwH of electricity per year.

Onyx Solar’s clients globally include Apple, Novartis Pharmaceuticals, Samsung, Coca-Cola and Heineken.