Finance firm takes 125,000 s/f.

Investment bank, Jefferies & Co., expanded by 125,000 s/f last week at 520 Madison Avenue, where it already occupies eight floors totaling 250,000 s/f. Cushman & Wakefield's Dale Schlather repped the tenant.

Owner Tishman Speyer was repped in house. Asking rents for the space the firm took in the building are listed at $80 per s/f. With a number of prominent financial firms seemingly close to taking space, the Jefferies expansion may mark the start of a period of activity in midtown.

A source reports that HSBC Bank is in negotiations with Equity Office Properties to take more than 200,000 s/f of space at 1095 Avenue of the Americas. The lease would be the first at the 1.2 million s/f office building that EOP bought from Verizon last year and is in the process of renovating.

"A lot of these large firms are looking to establish a campus," said Cushman & Wakefield executive vice president Josh Kuriloff. Located on the corner 40th Street and Fifth Avenue, HSBC Tower sits diagonally across Bryant Park from 1095 Avenue of the Americas.

Bear Stearns, meanwhile, is also looking to expand its campus past the confines of its headquarters building at 383 Madison Avenue. The investment banking giant is said to be close to taking most if not all of the 600,000 s/f 522 Avenue of the Americas, which was recently sold by a partnership between Stellar Management and the Rockpoint Group to Broadway Real Estate Partners for $420 million.

L&L Acquisitions principal David Levinson, who until last year was also a high-powered broker at CB Richard Ellis, is representing Bear Stearns in its search for space.