Brookfield: Center Parcs’ next big owner May 31, 2015 Family favourite Center Parcs looks set to change owners, with Brookfield interested in snapping it up Adventure holidays are very big business. Family-friendly Center Parcs runs five sites around the UK, and made profits of £147m last year. And its sustained success attracts the very biggest investors. Private equity group Blackstone is selling the group, [...]
The Crossrail effect: Fares between Liverpool Street and Shenfield cut by up to 40pc as TfL Rail takes £5m hit May 26, 2015 Essex commuters will be the first to benefit from London’s Crossrail train service, with fare cuts of up to 40 per cent introduced this weekend. Although the east-west London line will not be travelling through the capital’s newly-dug tunnels until 2019, some services between Liverpool Street and Shenfield will be run as TfL Rail from [...]
UK national rail strike: Which train routes are affected, will my ticket be valid, when will the strike take place? All your Network Rail bank holiday walkout questions answered May 21, 2015 UPDATE 2.45pm: The RMT has followed the TSSA union in "suspending" its strike . Things are not going well for Network Rail: having tried everything in its arsenal to prevent a planned strike by workers in the RMT union over pay and jobs, yesterday it resorted to sending threatening legal letters. Not exactly a sign of power. As [...]
Restaurant review: The Barge House May 19, 2015 The Barge House is adorable. To get to it, you have to walk down the Regent’s Canal tow-path between Hoxton and Haggerston, where old Victorian warehouses rise indomitably out of the water, all of them now home to design studios and craft breweries. It’s been open since November but nobody noticed because the only reason [...]
Matalan chief Jason Hargreaves makes retailer a family affair May 14, 2015 Jason Hargreaves made a trip to Oxford Street earlier this year with his four-year-old daughter in tow. The managing director of Matalan, the out-of-town value fashion and homeware chain founded by his father, John Hargreaves, 30 years ago, came to view its first ever central London store at the east end of on Oxford [...]
Great Portland Estates and Aberdeen Asset Management sell £222m Wigmore Street office block April 27, 2015 Great Portland Estates and Aberdeen Asset Management have sold a huge office scheme at 95 Wigmore Street in London’s West End for £222.4m. The Wigmore Partnership, the companies’ joint venture, said yesterday that UBS Global Asset Management’s real estate business has bought 95 Wigmore Street near Bond Street station. The 98,800 square feet office block [...]
Zara founder Amancio Ortega’s buying spree on Oxford St April 12, 2015 The billionaire founder of Spanish clothing empire Inditex has snapped up a cluster of buildings on the east end of London’s Oxford Street. Amancio Ortega, who founded the fashion giant Zara in 1975, is understood to have bought a development at 26-48 Oxford Street from property companies Land Securities and Frogmore through his investment vehicle [...]
New Look adds to regeneration of east end of Oxford Street March 4, 2015 FASHION retailer New Look is to open a flagship store at the east end of Oxford Street, helping to drive further change at the notoriously dowdy end of London’s largest shopping street. Property firm Great Portland Estates said yesterday that it has pre-let a third of its huge 90,500 square feet development at 73-89 Oxford [...]
Great Portland Estates jumps in value thanks to West End property demand January 29, 2015 Great Portland Estates (GPE) yesterday posted a 5.2 per cent surge in the value of its property portfolio, thanks to London’s booming West End property market, despite increased uncertainty ahead of the upcoming general election. The FTSE 250 developer said the value of its estate was worth £3.07bn at 31 December, up £152.3m on the [...]
How London’s brutalist Centre Point tower is being turned into luxury flats with a view January 26, 2015 Both reviled and admired, London’s Centre Point tower at the east end of Oxford Street has stirred controversy ever since it was first erected in 1966. A beehive of concrete and glass, its brutalist-style was regarded as an eyesore on the skyline and the fact that a building of its height (it is 117 metres [...]