Chiltern Firehouse head chef Nuno Mendes launches £1.75m Seedrs crowdfunding to re-open restaurant Viajante in Wapping November 10, 2015 The Michelin-starred head chef at Chiltern Firehouse is hoping to raise £1.75m on crowdfunding site Seedrs to re-open his restaurant Viajante, in a Victorian warehouse in Wapping. Nuno Mendes is offering 33.3 per cent of the equity in the new venture, along with rewards for big investors, ranging from priority booking, to private meals. The minimum investment is £10. The [...]
UK Christmas sales 2015: Consumer spending soars as retailers worry over upcoming figures November 9, 2015 A double-whammy of sales data has suggested we could be in for bumper Christmas sales figures. Card giants Visa and Barclaycard both report that spending bounced back from a summer slow down in October. Visa’s index found spending growth rose to a three-month high last month, up 2.1 per cent, while Barclaycard revealed spending growth [...]
UK unemployment figures set to be in the spotlight – London Report November 8, 2015 Following the US jobs report on Friday, UK investors will focus on Wednesday’s release of the September employment report and October’s tally for the claimant count. They will be published alongside a raft of secondtier indicators on retail sales and house prices. Today, funeral operator Dignity is expected to reveal a jump in revenues when [...]
How you build well-being into an office: Thinking beyond design makes economic sense for businesses November 6, 2015 Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, recently launched an initiative to improve health and well-being among NHS employees – designed to tackle the £2.4bn annual cost of sickness absences among its 1.3m staff in England. Stevens’s plans include giving staff access to Zumba classes, promoting cycling to work, and efforts to improve workers’ stress [...]
Electra chairman Roger Yates resigns as Sherborne’s activist investor Edward Bramson voted onto the board by shareholders November 5, 2015 Sherborne's Edward Bramson has finally succeeded in his mission to join the board of private equity group Electra, after 53.5 per cent of shareholders voted in favour of his appointment as a director, 16.6m to 14.4m against. Chairman Roger Yates resigned from the from the board with immediate effect after the meeting. Sherborne's first move is to introduce "a strategic [...]
London house prices: Peckham pre-fab shack auctioned for almost £1m November 4, 2015 More London house price madness: a tiny pre-fab bungalow on a street corner in Peckham has sold for just under £1m. The tumble-down bungalow, on the corner of Costa Street and McDermott Street, close to Peckham Rye Common, went under the hammer with a guide price of £590,000 – but sold for £950,000, at an auction on [...]
Hoppers, Gymkhana’s casual sibling, lives up to the family name November 4, 2015 Sometimes I want to sit down in a restaurant, eat and be gone. Sometimes I want to move in, stay for a while, invite friends, meet the restaurant’s parents, marry the place and have a baby. If I were to marry a restaurant, though, a more sensible betrothal would be to one of Hoppers’ siblings [...]
Just Eat share price drops eight per cent despite orders up 64 per cent November 3, 2015 Online home delivery marketplace JUST EAT failed to deliver for investors despite offering them a tasty 64 per cent increase in orders in its third quarter trading update. Shares closed down 1.63 cent, at 433.7p, having dropped as low as 408.2p, during trading. [stockChart code="JE." date="2015-11-03 17:00"] The company reported that the poor summer weather [...]
Leon founder Henry Dimbleby launches £3.5m crowdfunding bid to create “world-class street food market” in London backed by Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver October 29, 2015 Could London be getting a world-class street food market? Henry Dimbleby, founder of natural fast-food restaurants Leon, and Street Feast’s Jonathan Downey are betting on it. Through London Union, Street Feast’s parent company, the pair is launching a crowdfunding bid hoping to raise £3.5m – enough money to create not just 12 local markets, but [...]
Restaurant review: There’s more to Palm Court than afternoon tea, thank god October 29, 2015 If I could click my fingers and banish one element of our national cuisine, it would be afternoon tea. It’s a dreary throwback to a time when we felt the need to ape our social betters, in this case by eating wildly overpriced cucumber sandwiches. Its emergence is often credited to Anna Maria Russell, the [...]