Asian clamour for safe investments lifts City property January 9, 2012 THE CITY and the Docklands enjoyed a big lift in commercial property deals last year, with £6.3bn changing hands through 108 transactions, new figures show. Activity was up 34 per cent by value on a year ago, according to real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield, with overseas funds making almost half of all purchases. Asian [...]
No recessions for 80 years: The fanciful world of High Speed Rail 2’s business case January 9, 2012 AFTER the well-flagged decision this afternoon to press ahead with the first stage of the High Speed 2 rail project (HS2), the City and business will be pressed to “contribute” to the strong business case. An aspect that MPs are singularly ill-equipped to consider, but that the City will focus on, is the way the [...]
SEASICK IN THE CITY AS BROADGATE HOLDS SWAY January 5, 2012 CITY WORKERS in the Broadgate Tower dropped everything on Tuesday to look up the meaning of “deflection”, after strong winds made the building sway so dramatically that staff complained of seasickness. The building may have been designed by award-winning architects Skidmore, Owings and Merrill – but when you are stuck in a 165m tower that [...]
NEED TO KNOW | AREA INSIGHT January 5, 2012 COMMUTING: Due to the East London Line extension, new transport links offer London on your doorstep. Haggerston overground station provides direct services to many important destinations including Canary Wharf and the West End in less than 30 minutes, London City Airport and Stratford for the nearby Olympic Stadium and Village. It also provides easy access [...]
Kaboul happy to win ugly in pursuit of Champions League January 4, 2012 TOTTENHAM defender Younes Kaboul believes his side’s new found ability to grind out results could prove the difference in their quest to return Champions League football to White Hart Lane next season. A 1-0 win over West Brom on Tuesday night saw Spurs take their festive haul to seven points from three games, despite failing [...]
Britain needs to take Chinese lessons January 3, 2012 IT is quite fashionable to be bearish on China these days. Few think the Asian superpower will be able to brush off the Eurozone woes, inflation is sky high and its housing market bubble is about to go pop. I’ve noticed a certain smugness in those who predict pain for the Chinese, as though it [...]
HOME FROM HOME SOHO LAUNCH FOR IPAD CROWD January 3, 2012 IF THE late Lucian Freud had owned a crash-pad in Soho, what would it have looked like? Such was the starting point for Apartment 58, the first in a new breed of members’ clubs for the iPad generation. “We wanted something that works for a busy executive in a major metropolis,” said Notting Hill Arts [...]
PROPERTY NEWS December 22, 2011 SAVILE ROW LEASE SOLD TO JOINT VENTURE Great Portland Estates has exchanged contracts to sell the long leasehold interest in 28/29 Savile Row to a joint venture between Aerium Finance and Allied London for £16.25m. The deal, which works out at £1,017 a square foot, is for a basement, ground and five upper floors. The [...]
Idowu rival banned for fighting with female star December 20, 2011 FRENCH triple-jumper Teddy Tamgho, the arch-rival of one of Britain’s leading Olympic hopefuls, Phillips Idowu, has escaped a ban that threatened to rule him out of the London 2012 Games. The World Indoor champion was hauled before French athletics chiefs for his part in an altercation with an unnamed female competitor at a training camp [...]
This Christmas, let’s all lift a glass to mark the birth of Homo sapiens urbanus December 20, 2011 MORE than half the world’s population now lives in cities. And with 1m people every week migrating to emerging cities, all developing regions, including Africa, are expected to have more people living in urban than rural areas by 2030. Across the planet, Homo sapiens will have become Homo sapiens urbanus. In this, the largest migration [...]