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Facebook Opens New London Office, to Create 800 UK Jobs

by Reuters

   LONDON --

   Facebook opens its new London office on Monday and said it would add
   800 more jobs in the capital next year, underlining its commitment to
   Britain as the country prepares for Brexit.

   The social network said more than half of the people working at the
   site in central London will focus on engineering, making it Facebook's
   biggest engineering hub outside the United States.

   It will also house Facebook's first in-house start-up incubator, called
   LDN_LAB, designed to help kick start fledgling British digital
   businesses.

   EMEA vice president Nicola Mendelsohn said Facebook was more committed
   than ever to the U.K. and supporting the growth of the country's
   innovative start-ups.

   "The U.K.'s flourishing entrepreneurial ecosystem and international
   reputation for engineering excellence makes it one of the best places
   in the world to build a tech company," she said.

   "And we've built our company here - this country has been a huge part
   of Facebook's story over the past decade, and I look forward to
   continuing our work to achieve our mission of bringing the world closer
   together."

   The new jobs, which come 10 years after the company set up its first
   London office, will take Facebook's total British workforce to more
   than 2,300 by the end of 2018, it said.

   Facebook, along with other U.S. digital giants including Google and
   Amazon, has not been deterred from expanding in London by Britain's
   decision to leave the European Union.

   It announced the new headquarters last year, shortly after Google said
   it was building a new hub in the city that will be able to accommodate
   more than 7,000 employees in total.

   Facebook's new office in the capital's West End, designed by architect
   Frank Gehry, will house engineers, developers, marketing and sales
   teams working on products like Workplace, its business product which
   was built in London, it said.