Conversions to housing driving office shortage July 28, 2014 DEVELOPERS converting commercial property into private homes are helping to drive the sharpest decline in availability of non-residential buildings in at least 16 years. According to figures released today by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), there has been a rapid drop in the number of available commercial properties across the UK. A third [...]
Chief executive of Net-A-Porter Mark Sebba to stand down July 27, 2014 Mark Sebba, the chief executive of online luxury fashion retailer Net-A-Porter is to stand down later this week after 11 years, during which the company’s innovative approach has grown it into a major player in the sector. Sebba joined the company in 2003, only three years after it was founded by Natalie Massenet in [...]
Inside Track: Sands deserves praise for facing critics July 27, 2014 Say what you like about Standard Chartered chief executive Peter Sands, and many people have in the past few days, he deserves credit for facing his critics. Sands knows that the performance of the emerging markets bank he runs hasn’t been all it could have been during the last few months. But on Thursday last [...]
Barclays’ Ashok Vaswani is hoping to turn around the UK’s most broken industry July 27, 2014 "My name is Ashok Vaswani. My role is to listen to customers, to make sure we give them what they want.” This understates his job title somewhat. Vaswani is Barclays’ CEO of personal and corporate banking, a powerful new job which has seen him take control of its global operations in retail, business and [...]
Don’t be gloomy – but there are still risks to the strong UK recovery July 27, 2014 Friday’s GDP data took us past a very symbolic landmark. The level of output in the UK is now slightly above its pre-recession peak. However, we should bear in mind that the UK population has risen by more than 4 per cent since early 2008. Average income per person is therefore still some way below [...]
In a field of his own: FarmDrop’s Ben Pugh talks crowdfunding and the future of our food July 27, 2014 In the time it’s taken FarmDrop founder Ben Pugh to discuss his company with me, it crowdfunded £13,000. After just eight days on crowdfunding platform Crowdcube, FarmDrop raised more than its £400,000 investment target. A new way of doing food is, it seems, quite popular. The FarmDrop concept is simple: it streamlines the food [...]
UK company profit warnings at three year high, says report July 27, 2014 The number of profit warnings issued by FTSE 100 companies was at a three-year high in the first quarter, according to a report by Ernst & Young. In its quarterly Analysis of UK Profit Warnings report, the consultancy firm revealed that companies listed on the London Stock Exchange issued a total of 74 warnings [...]
Amazon shares slide as markets take a dim view of second-quarter loss July 25, 2014 Amazon shares have folded faster than high-street bookstores today after the Nasdaq showed what it thought of the world's largest online retailer posting a loss for the second quarter and falling some way short of market expectations. Shares had slumped by 11.36 per cent at pixel time with earlier losses as high as twelve per cent. That [...]
Boris Johnson avoids talking tennis by pulling on his sparring gloves July 24, 2014 It looks like the “will he, won’t he” tennis match between Boris Johnson and the Chernukhins (the Russian couple who paid £160,000 at a fundraiser to play BoJo and David Cameron) will go ahead, after Boris said he was going to get in training for it yesterday. Now we think we know how he’s getting [...]
Amazon share price dives as losses increase July 24, 2014 More of the same from Amazon, as it continues its tradition of favouring growth over profits. The e-commerce giant has just announced a loss of $126m, or $0.27 per share for the three months to the end of June, coming in significantly below Wall Street estimates of a $0.15 per share loss. The second quarter [...]