It’s all Gold for Hammers as ex-City duo lodge £50m bid December 14, 2009 FORMER Birmingham City co-owners David Gold and David Sullivan stepped up their expected takeover of struggling West Ham last night by lodging a formal £50m bid. The Hammers are seeking new owners following the bankruptcy of Icelandic chairman Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson, while shirt sponsors, the XL holiday company, also went out of business. Gold, meanwhile, has [...]
Sun, sea and Hinduism all come together in Mauritius December 14, 2009 THE first thing that you notice about Mauritius is that it is a real place. By that I mean that it is a contrast to its holiday competitors in the Indian Ocean, the Seychelles and Maldives. They are made up of dozens of tiny islands which are often owned by resorts and have been turned into [...]
Buy-to-let is back as rents stabilise and low prices attract landlords December 3, 2009 BUY-TO-LET is starting to look like an attractive proposition once again, as lower house prices and a stabilising rental market result in more enticing yields. Data from LSL Property Services – the company that owns Your Move and Reeds Rains estate agencies – shows that annual returns on landlords’ investments have turned positive for the [...]
West End rent is the highest in the world December 1, 2009 LONDON’S West End has regained its title as the most expensive place in the world to rent an office, overtaking Tokyo in the past six months as the recovery in demand for space begins to take hold. Despite recording an annual tumble in rents of nearly 18 per cent, banking and finance companies are increasing [...]
FOOD & BOOZE NEWS November 30, 2009 FOOD AND MUSIC IN CAMDENA taste of Sicily is coming to Camden Town, in the shape of new restaurant Caponata, which opens tomorrow night. And Camden being the centre of London’s live music scene, it’s got its own music and arts space, called The Forge. Signature dishes in the main restaurant will include the, um, [...]
Forget Dubai’s woes: Iran is the real risk November 29, 2009 BANKS have written down $3 trillion or so over the past couple of years. We should therefore keep the crisis that is engulfing Dubai in some sort of perspective. The total debts of the Dubai government are around $80bn and nobody is suggesting that more than a small proportion will need to be written off. [...]
Think inside the Square: why the City is a top spot to buy a home November 26, 2009 IF YOU’RE looking for the ultimate Tube-busting pied a terre, the Square Mile can’t be bettered for history, beauty and – of course – convenience. Other financial centres are not exactly places you’d want to live: tightly packed with skyscrapers and fumes, they have a sterile, uninhabitable feel (just think of mid-town New York or [...]
It is time for Asian economies to grow up November 24, 2009 MORE than ever, I’m convinced that a combination of the West’s ultra-loose monetary policies and Asia’s juvenile reaction to the tidal wave of cheap money this has created are fuelling a new bubble. So I was fascinated to read a series of reports yesterday arguing a very similar point. They are from HSBC’s global research [...]
HomeServe adds more customers November 24, 2009 HOMESERVE yesterday posted a higher first-half profit from core operations, aided by growth in customer and policy numbers, and said it would not be affected by the recent floods in north west England. HomeServe, which provides cover for a range of emergencies such as broken boilers and overflowing washing machines, also said it was confident [...]
CBI boss Richard Lambert can see early signs of economic recovery November 19, 2009 THE worst is over for the British economy. At least, that was the message from Richard Lambert, the Confederation of Business Industry’s (CBI) thoughtful director-general, when we meet. “We have finally hit the deck,” he tells me, leaning forward. “Things are a lot better now than in the first quarter of this year. Where we [...]