Park Plaza hotel operator warns of ‘quite severe’ staff shortages in London March 1, 2022 Park Plaza hotel operator PPHE has reported revenue recovering to 39.5 per cent of 2019 levels as it warns of “quite severe” staff shortages in the coming months. Shares in the company dipped slightly on Tuesday morning after PPHE announced a 38.9 per cent total revenue increase to £141.4m for the financial year ended 31 [...]
Mortgage approvals highest since the summer as cost of living crunch looms March 1, 2022 Mortgage approvals for house purchases lifted in January, in another monthly boost for the housing market. Figures released from the Bank of England on Tuesday morning show some 73,922 mortgage approvals during last month. This is the highest approval number since July 2021, when 75,900 mortgages were given the green light. It also represents the [...]
Exclusive: Ultimate Products’ airfryer maker brand receives €1m order from German retailer March 1, 2022 Homeware giant Ultimate Product has said its newly snapped-up kitchen electrical brand has inked a €1m order from a leading German hypermarket retailer. Ultimate Products, which owns legacy homeware brands including Salter and Beldray, told CityA.M. exclusively its German brand Petra had received its first substantial order from an unnamed retailer. The order is for [...]
Kwasi Kwarteng: Fracking not the answer to soaring energy bills February 28, 2022 The business secretary has rejected onshore fracking for gas as the solution to swollen energy prices. In a series of tweets on Monday, Kwasi Kwarteng pointed instead to investment in “cheap, clean power” in order to protect the UK from global gas markets. Extra supply generated from untapped shale reserves in the UK “won’t materially [...]
Second chances: Ex-offenders could help solve recruitment crisis February 28, 2022 “I always wanted to be a drug dealer. Getting a job would have been strange to me,” Liam Meredith, an ex-offender who now runs his own catering business, says. Many young men like Meredith struggle to break a cycle of offending even after they leave prison, due to tumultuous home lives. For men like Meredith, [...]
London retail recovers after Storm Eunice footfall hit February 28, 2022 London’s shopping destinations rebounded last week as crowds returned to the heart of the capital with gusto. Footfall leaped 17 per cent in central London last week, compared to the week prior, according to retail experts Springboard. It was also 374.3 per cent busier compared to the same week last year, when the country was [...]
Real estate giant JLL reports record revenue for fourth quarter February 28, 2022 Real estate giant JLL has reported record revenue and fee revenue for the fourth quarter. In results published on Monday, the Chicago-based firm reported record revenue of $5.9bn and fee revenue of $2.8bn for the quarter. Revenue shot up 23 per cent while fee revenue jumped 42 per cent. The real estate and investment management [...]
High Court ruling: Teletext Holidays broke consumer law with refund failures February 28, 2022 The High Court has ruled that Teletext Holidays broke consumer law by failing to refund customers within the appropriate time period for bookings cancelled due to Covid. The Court agreed with the consumer watchdog that Truly Travel and Alpha Holidays, which traded as Teletext Holidays and Alpharooms, breached travel regulations. Under the Package Travel and [...]
Hackney’s London Fields Brewery brought to the market after Carlsberg Marston’s close taproom February 28, 2022 East London brewery London Fields Brewery has been brought to the market by property consultancy Gerald Eve. Situated under Hackney’s railway arches the brewery was closed just four years after Carlsberg Marston’s Brewing Company snapped it up. The brewing titan’s CEO Paul Davies said at the end of last year the firm had “taken the [...]
Carlsberg and Coca-Cola bottler forced to halt production in Ukraine after Russian invasion February 24, 2022 Brewing giant Carlsberg and a Coca-Cola bottler have shut down plants in Ukraine in the wake of Russia’s invasion. Danish brewer Carlsberg initially said it had been forced to shut its brewery in Lviv, western Ukraine, after supplies of natural gas to the brewery were cut, Reuters reported. Now, Carlsberg, which has a 31 per [...]
