Mike Slade’s giant Barts Square scheme in the City approved November 21, 2012 PLANS for one of the largest ever regeneration projects on the former St Bartholomew’s Hospital site in the City have been approved. Helical Bar, the property developer run by industry veteran Mike Slade, yesterday said the City planning committee has given the go-ahead to build 215 flats, 230,00 square feet of offices and 27,000 square [...]
How much Christmas shopping will you do online? November 21, 2012 CHRISTOPHER JENNER SWISS RE I’ll probably do about 85 per cent of it online due to laziness. Compared to last year, I do think my Christmas online shopping has progressed substantially. I mainly order vouchers for people and get my shopping done throughout December. PAMELA HARTLEY STANDARD BANK I imagine I’ll do about 50 per [...]
Minoan snaps up Classic Travel November 21, 2012 Scottish travel group Minoan yesterday said it would buy specialist travel agency Classic Travel as well as the Golf Concierge brand. AIM-listed Minoan said it would pay a maximum of £600,000 for the Classic Travel business, dependent on it meeting targets over the next two years of trading. Separately, it also bought the Golf Concierge [...]
Unite Group launches retail bond November 21, 2012 Unite Group, the UK’s biggest student accommodation provider, yesterday become the latest firm to launch a retail bond. With £2,000 as the minimum investment, the bond pays a coupon rate of 6.125 per cent and matures on 12 June 2020. The group aims to raise £50 to £75m from the bond to fund expansion. Investec [...]
Sainsbury’s adds 10,000 new jobs November 21, 2012 Supermarket chain Sainsbury’s yesterday announced it would create 10,000 new jobs in its convenience business over the next three years. The new roles, come on top of a further 20,000 temporary roles created to serve increased customer demand over the Christmas period. Sainsbury’s plans to open one to two convenience stores a week going forward [...]
Remortgaging still depressed despite pick-up November 21, 2012 REMORTGAGE lending soared between September and October, according to data out yesterday, cementing a solid annual increase. Gross remortgage lending climbed from £3.3bn in September to £4.1bn in October, LMS estimated this morning, but the improvements could not erase a significant portion of the losses since before the financial crisis, when loans typically totalled around [...]
Growth still slow across OECD group of developed economies November 21, 2012 DEVELOPED economies continued to struggle to find growth in the third quarter of the year, data out yesterday suggested. GDP grew just 0.2 per cent across the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as a whole, in the third quarter, as Japan and troubled Eurozone economies weighed on modest expansion in the US and [...]
US factory activity rebounds improving hopes over economy November 21, 2012 US MANUFACTURING surprised onlookers with its strength in November, as data out yesterday suggested the pace of its recovery was rebounding. Other data out yesterday showed new unemployment insurance claims were retreating back towards the levels seen before superstorm Sandy. The US yesterday hit 52.4 on Markit’s purchasing managers’ index (PMI), a prominent business survey, [...]
MPs: Slow down benefit reform to help jobless learn to budget November 21, 2012 THE GOVERNMENT is pushing ahead with its benefit reforms too quickly to properly assess the costs and benefits, according to a new report out today from the Work and Pensions Select Committee. The universal benefits system is designed to simplify the current array of six different out of work benefits, link benefits more closely with [...]
Taxman missing out on billions because of avoidance schemes November 21, 2012 A CRACKDOWN on tax avoidance schemes raked in an additional £200m for the government in the last year, according to estimates published yesterday by the National Audit Office (NAO). But HM Revenue and Customs is still missing out on £5bn from continued tax avoidance – that is, “using the tax law to get a tax [...]
