Investment in central London property hits record high April 8, 2014 Investment in central London commercial property jumped to record levels in the first quarter, driven by big ticket deals in the City & the Docklands and overseas buyers snapping up trophy schemes in the capital. According to Cushman & Wakefield, 32 deals took place across the City and the Docklands in the first three months [...]
Why are London’s educated young failing to find jobs? April 8, 2014 A new report lays out some of the stark truths behind London’s youth unemployment today. Despite a more highly educated young workforce, and the economic dynamism of the city, the number of unemployed young people remains outsized in comparison to other people in the country. London’s youth unemployment is particularly high in comparison to the [...]
Lloyds struggles to hire IT director April 8, 2014 Lloyds is having trouble finding a non-executive director who can understand its creaking IT systems and bring the bank into the modern world, its former chairman Sir Win Bischoff said today. Currently its computer setup is made of decades-old systems from several banks, forced together over years of mergers and acquisitions. “They have been bolted [...]
Manufacturing growth hits February 2011 high April 8, 2014 Yet more strong data from the UK's manufacturing sector. Both industrial and manufacturing production smashed expectations this February, with manufacturing production rising 3.8 per cent in the year to date. According to the Office for National Statistics, February saw the third consecutive monthly rise for the sector. The annual increase is the fastest pace of [...]
The UK Holcim-Lafarge assets that could be up for sale April 7, 2014 The Holcim Lafarge mega-merger will result in a number of asset disposals across multiple jurisdictions to avoid the wrath of the competition regulators. The UK will most likely play a part in the world’s largest cement makers’ plans for €4.9bn (£4bn) of divestments – providing opportunities for existing or new players to tap into the [...]
Is the US Jobs act a dud for alternative investment managers? April 7, 2014 The Jumpstart Our Business Startups (Jobs) act came into law in the US heralding what many believed would be a watershed moment in the notoriously secretive and guarded world of hedge funds. The law, passed exactly two years ago this month, lifted restrictions on hedge funds and other alternative investment managers to market their funds [...]
Fast-drying concrete cost Victoria Line passengers 100,000 hours, says TfL April 7, 2014 The spillage of some fast-setting concrete saw London's Victoria Line halted in January this year, as a signal room was flooded with the stuff. “We understand that a foot of concrete burst into the control room having been poured into an escalator void,” a spokesman for the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, [...]
Why Game of Thrones is now the most important show on TV April 7, 2014 Tonight’s broadcast of Game of Thrones isn’t just the start of another fantastic season of bloodletting, beheading and gratuitous violence, it’s actually the most important thing happening on TV. For Sky, it’s the payoff from a £150m bet it made on HBO (the US channel behind Game of Thrones) in 2010 for exclusive UK access [...]
Gehry and Foster unveil Battersea Power Station designs April 7, 2014 Architects Frank Gehry and Norman Foster unveiled their designs yesterday for the next phase of development at Battersea Power Station that will include 1,300 homes on either side of new high street forming the gateway to the landmark building. It will be the first building in London for the Canadian-American Gehry, whose best known works [...]
The Eurozone’s most powerful finance ministers are tiptoeing around their big division April 7, 2014 This morning veteran German finance minister and new French finance minister Michel Sapin met in Berlin, giving an amicable press conference that did little more than hint at perhaps their biggest split on policy Sapin is not as outwardly radical as incoming economy minister Arnaud Montebourg, but is nonetheless tasked with pushing for less stringent [...]
