He’s seen off his own PM, but now the chancellor must beat the Tories April 14, 2010 WHEN all politicians around him are losing their heads, Alistair Darling is intent on keeping his. Having seen off an attempt to replace him with Gordon Brown’s favourite apparatchik Ed Balls – who wanted to use Labour’s final Budget to make vote-winning spending promises – the famously low-key chancellor says the new enemies of prudence [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING April 12, 2010 FINANCIAL TIMES TOP CITY SKYSCRAPER FOR SALE Tower 42, the tallest occupied skyscraper in the City, will be put up for sale as booming prices return to London’s commercial property market. The 600ft former NatWest tower near the Bank of England is expected to fetch more than £300m ($461m) when its owners, Hermes Real Estate [...]
Happy Easter for West End April 5, 2010 POOR weather and early spring sales offers from retailers drove at least 2m shoppers to the West End over the Bank holiday weekend. Some retailers are understood to have recorded double-digit sales growth on the Friday, although trading did slow down over Saturday and Easter Monday, according to the New West End Company – which [...]
British Land secures 465,000 square feet of London lettings as market turns March 31, 2010 RECESSION-HIT London remains a magnet for office occupiers, property company British Land showed yesterday, after announcing 465,000 square feet of new lettings since February, hiking its occupancy to 92 per cent. The real estate investment trust said it had let 117,000 square feet at its 10 Triton Street project in London’s West End to Aegis [...]
What Westfield tells us about UK Plc March 28, 2010 IF you want to understand what is happening to the economy, you could do worse than to check out the Westfield shopping centre in West London on a weekend. The place was packed to the rafters on Saturday afternoon, with long queues in front of every single one of the dozens of restaurants and cafes; [...]
American-style glitz and glam come sailing into Barcelona March 28, 2010 WHATEVER the brand values are that the W Hotel group holds dear, subtlety probably sits low on the list. Take, for instance, the way it classes its rooms. Not for W those fuddy-duddy words like Superior (meaning bog-standard) and Deluxe – instead, W offers you Mega rooms and Fabulous rooms, or if you want a [...]
Beat the blues with a slice of Caribbean sun March 25, 2010 WINTER is finally over, and the sun has been reminding us all of its existence in the past week or so. If you are already thinking ahead to next year and wondering how you will get through another few months of darkness and “snow days”, there’s a solution: buy a home in the Caribbean. Barbados [...]
2010 is the year of the big move to the country March 25, 2010 MANY who earn their crust in London dream of living in the country, and there are good reasons to make 2010 the year to make the move. While the property markets in the desirable parts of London have now fully recovered, with prices similar to those achieved in the 2007 peak, the same isn’t true [...]
The bankers who saw the crash coming, and bet on it March 24, 2010 THE BIG SHORT BY MICHAEL LEWIS Allen Lane, £25 by Zoe Strimpel THE Big Short comes late in the day, at least in terms of the publishing frenzy that (inevitably) followed the financial crisis. Indeed you might have an impulse to roll your eyes and say: “not again” – not another book whose theme is [...]
FOOD & BOOZE NEWS March 22, 2010 THAI NEW YEAR AT MANGO TREE Belgravia’s smart Thai eatery, Mango Tree on Grosvenor Square, is holding a Thai New Year Party on 14 April. The celebration of the Songkran festival will feature a show of traditional dances, while diners can enjoy a special tasting plate of delicacies from across Thailand – including hormok (fish [...]