European retail sales cool off after a solid start to the year August 5, 2015 RETAILERS in the Eurozone saw sales drop 0.6 per cent in June, according to figures released by Eurostat yesterday. The numbers take the volume of retail sales to just 1.2 per cent above what they were in June 2014. The drop comes after robust growth in sales over most of the first half of this [...]
Investor confidence sparks shopping mall building boom August 5, 2015 THE NUMBER of shopping centres under development between now and 2018 has grown to 9.6m square feet, according to figures by DTZ, thanks to improving retail sales and growing institutional investor demand. A report released by the property advisory firm yesterday showed there are nine schemes under construction and due to open in the remainder [...]
Unite student digs in demand as profits soar August 5, 2015 STUDENT accommodation giant Unite has reported a 45 per cent jump in earnings in the first half of 2015 as near-record numbers of students seeking admission to UK universities helped boost demand for rooms. The FTSE 250 company, which has 45,000 beds across the UK, said net asset value per share rose by 30 per [...]
Polypipe to pay £145m for rival Nuaire August 5, 2015 PLASTIC piping systems Polypipe yesterday announced that it had agreed to acquire rival Nuaire from Electra Partners for £145m. In a statement to the stock market, Polypipe said the purchase will be financed using a combination of existing cash from the balance sheet and new debt and is expected to complete by the end of [...]
Low inflation and strong pound lead economists to vote 8-1 to hold rates August 5, 2015 INTEREST rates should be held this month, according to a majority of City A.M.’s panel of economists . There were many reasons deterring members from arguing for a rate hike. Many of the panel are concerned about low inflation. The annual rate of inflation is currently zero per cent, around which it has hovered since [...]
UK companies say problem of late payments is getting worse August 5, 2015 BUSINESSES’ cashflow is being plagued by late payments, according to survey data published yesterday by Lloyds Bank. Of the firms that said they were experiencing cashflow problems, 59 per cent said they were due to late payments. The payments problem is likely to get worse, say 31 per cent of firms, up from 27 per [...]
Disney weighs on Dow Jones – New York Report August 5, 2015 The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite rose yesterday following three days of losses as tech shares advanced, while the blue chip Dow index ticked lower, weighed by Disney’s largest daily drop in almost seven years. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 10.22 points, or 0.06 per cent, to 17,540.47; the S&P 500 gained 6.52 points, [...]
City Moves for 06 August 2015 | Who’s switching jobs August 5, 2015 Savills The property adviser has appointed Julian Lyon as director in its worldwide occupier services team. He joins from General Motors UK, where he spent 17 years consolidating its UK property portfolio. Lyon has 30 years’ experience in the commercial property market. Standard Chartered Mark Smith has been appointed group chief risk officer at the [...]
Super Thursday: Why business wants the Bank of England to hold its nerve August 5, 2015 As the UK’s economic recovery solidifies, the siren calls for interest rate rises are intensifying. Even the governor of the Bank of England – who no one would describe as a monetary policy hawk – has begun to prepare the ground for rate hikes in the not-too-distant future. With the US Federal Reserve set to [...]
August Tube strike 2015: Unions are standing against progress in their fight against the Night Tube August 5, 2015 As Londoners struggle to get to work today, trade unions are also struggling – to justify their strike. If you listen to the spin from the RMT, the 24-hour Tube (the justification the union is giving for downing tools) is a “rushed and botched vanity project”. Yet the plans were actually announced two years ago. [...]
