Howard Shore, Shore Capital founder, leads $40m investment in new Israeli co-working business Mixer February 26, 2018 Shared workspace business Mixer has just nabbed $40m (£28.6m) of funding in an investment round led by Howard Shore, the founder of investment group Shore Capital. Mixer, based in Israel, is hoping to expand into Europe and the US and has a new site planned in Berlin. Shore will now become chairman of the business, [...]
Beware the cryptocurrency hype February 20, 2018 Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, as philosopher George Santayana famously wrote. What’s happening in markets today is a stark reminder of the dot-com days at the end of the last millennium, when company valuations rocketed at the mere mention of internet-related buzzwords. Fortunes were made and lost in relative [...]
Serious Fraud Office slaps Barclays with new charge over Qatar capital raising scandal February 12, 2018 The UK’s fraud watchdog has today hefted a new charge onto Barclays Bank, in relation to an emergency fundraising it conducted in the summer of 2008. The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) today charged Barclays with giving “unlawful financial assistance”, after it raised £4.5bn in June 2008 and £7.3bn that October from investors including Qatar Holding [...]
The UK must not get left behind by China’s rise as a new superpower February 5, 2018 Last week, the Prime Minister visited China, a country set to have the largest economy on Earth by 2030. Its rapid growth is expected to continue for another generation. In 2016, foreign direct investment from China reached $180bn – a striking figure when compared with 2002, when it totalled less than $5bn. The sophistication of [...]
Focus On Vauxhall: Donald Trump might not be keen on it, but international investors dig these skyscrapers south of the river February 2, 2018 Vauxhall got dragged through the mud by no less a figure than the President of the United States recently. The US Embassy’s much touted move to the “off location” was supposedly the reason behind Donald Trump’s cancelled visit to the UK, even though the new building has its own moat. Clearly, tech behemoth Apple didn’t [...]
House prices in UK cities are now less affordable than any time in the last 10 years February 2, 2018 Buying a house in UK cities has reached its least affordable in a decade, new research has shown, after the gap between house prices and average earnings widened further. The average worker in must now spend seven times their earnings to buy a house in a city, figures by Lloyds Bank showed, up from 6.9 [...]
Sparking change: Formula E reveals plans to overtake motor sport rivals January 31, 2018 Nothing beats having an original Darth Vader helmet in your office to show you mean business. Alejandro Agag has a sickeningly impressive CV. Revered in his native Spain for political and business prowess, he was an MEP in his twenties before becoming a key ally of Silvio Berlusconi. Meanwhile, Agag continues to dine out on [...]
Elizabeth Line opening to top expectations on new homes and jobs created as end of Crossrail project draws closer January 30, 2018 The number of homes and jobs created due to the development of the £14.8bn Elizabeth Line is set to greatly surpass expectations, according to a new report by commercial property agency GVA. The research, commissioned by Crossrail, found that the impact of the new railway on the creation of new homes and impact on property [...]
The digital nomads: How to pack a suitcase and start a new life working from abroad January 25, 2018 Who among us hasn’t dreamed of jacking in their day job to trade forex from a laptop in Malibu or open a beach bar in Thailand? You might have read The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss and asked why you haven’t yet “escaped the nine-to-five to live anywhere and join the new rich”. I [...]
Nestled deep within the Ecuadorian cloud forest, Mashpi Lodge is a hotel at one with the nature surrounding it January 24, 2018 Shortly after the turn of the century the former mayor of Quito, Roque Sevilla, bought up a vast chunk of the Ecuadorian cloud forest from a local logging company, and turned the land into one of the largest privately owned conservation areas in the country. Somewhere in the centre of it all, on the site [...]