Hello, hello, hello. Who will buy London’s New Scotland Yard for £250m? September 2, 2014 New Scotland Yard has been put up for sale with a price tag of £250m in the biggest shake up of the Metropolitan Police’s estate in more than 50 years. The 1960s office block in Victoria is being sold by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) as part of a strategy to sell [...]
Hammerson sells Mayfair HQ for £54m September 2, 2014 Hammerson has sold off its last remaining office building as part of a strategy set out two years ago to focus solely on retail property in the UK and France. The FTSE 100-listed company announced yesterday that it had sold its 50 per cent stake in 10 Grosvenor Street in Mayfair to its joint venture [...]
Planning laws are a threat to this house-building bull run – Bottom Line September 2, 2014 Rising revenues and climbing profits have become par for the course for British house-builders this summer. Redrow was the latest to post a bullish update yesterday, boosted by the coalition’s controversial Help-to-Buy programme which effectively uses taxpayer cash to prop up cash-poor house-hunters. But despite this gift to construction firms’ bottom lines, the government is [...]
Help-to-Buy mortgages nearly double in 2014 second quarter September 2, 2014 The Help-to-Buy scheme is making up an increasing proportion of the mortgage market, with the number of government-guaranteed loans nearly doubling between the first and second quarters of the year. There were 11,243 uses of the controversial scheme between April and June, up significantly from 6,335 in the first three months of the year. When [...]
Biggest bottle of English sparkling wine signed by Damien Hirst yours for £15k September 2, 2014 There will be a very special addition to Christie’s second annual “Out of the Ordinary” sale tomorrow that will put the stereotype of City workers loving sparkling wine to the ultimate test. The award-winning winery Chapel Down has produced the biggest bottle of sparkling wine ever, weighing 26kg and is the equivalent of 10 [...]
Diamond Dave Lewis surprises Tesco staff with rare appearance at Birmingham conference September 2, 2014 Twitter was abuzz yesterday with hashtags like #inspired and #TheFutureLooksGreat after the new boss of Tesco paid a surprise visit to a leadership conference in Birmingham. Retail newbie Dave Lewis, who has jumped in to save Tesco, made news headlines after he wrote to his 500,000 employees asking them to email him with ideas [...]
M&A deals in UK fall to 27-year quarterly low September 2, 2014 THE NUMBER of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the UK and arranged abroad by UK-owned firms fell to at least a 27-year low in the second quarter of the year. Balfour Beatty and Carillion called off a construction mega-merger last month, but official data released this morning showed that the firms weren’t the only ones [...]
Food costs help to power 16th month of retail price deflation September 2, 2014 Shop prices fell again during the year to August with the lowest food inflation on record, according to an industry body this morning. Figures released by the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and Nielsen today show that shop prices overall fell by 1.6 per cent – the 16th month of deflation on record. Although the pace [...]
Swiss economy catches cold as EU sneezes September 2, 2014 SWITZERLAND’S economy unexpectedly flatlined in the second quarter as trade took a hit from stagnation in its main export market, Europe, and a dip in construction spending. The data, missing forecasts of a 0.5 per cent increase from the previous quarter, was the weakest reported by the country’s State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) in [...]
Construction sector celebrates strongest conditions since 2007 September 2, 2014 THE CONSTRUCTION sector is still expanding as house builders get started on a growing number of projects, according to a survey of the industry released yesterday. Although analysts expect a modest slowdown for the economy as the year comes to an end, builders reported the second-strongest conditions since 2007 in August, according to data firm [...]