Quintain JV sells offices at Pier Walk August 9, 2010 REAL estate investor Quintain has sold its Pier Walk development near Canary Wharf to DekaBank, Germany’s largest open-ended fund manager, for £97.1m. Quintain, which owned the seven-story building at Greenwich Peninsula in a joint venture with Bovis Lend Lease, said the sale represents a six per cent uplift on the property’s valuation in March and [...]
Quintain sells GreEnwich property for £97m August 9, 2010 QUINTAIN Estates and Development has sold Pier Walk in its Greenwich Peninsula development near Canary Wharf to a unit of Germany’s largest fund manager DekaBank. Deka Immobilien GmbH paid £97.1m in cash for the property, representing a six per cent uplift on the last independent valuation on 31 March and an investment yield of 5.9 [...]
We need to enhance London as a business hub August 8, 2010 LAST week, British Land and Blackstone agreed a deal to build the City of London’s largest office building to house the new European headquarters of UBS. And whilst we are still very early in the planning process – no formal application has been made – the City of London has, as always, been liaising with [...]
Bond St tube gets £300m facelift August 4, 2010 Transport for London (TfL) has awarded a £300m contract to Costain and Laing O’Rourke to redevelop Bond Street Tube station, with the upgrades expected to take up to seven years. Once finished, Bond Street station is expected to have a new entrance and ticket hall north of Oxford Street, new escalators, improved interchanges between the [...]
Abu Dhabi in bid for high speed rail line August 1, 2010 THE Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) has agreed to join Morgan Stanley and private equity group 3i in a bid for the high-speed railway linking London with the Channel Tunnel, it is understood. State-owned ADIA, considered the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, is said to be in the “very early stages” regarding its involvement in [...]
Migrant cap will hurt City’s competitiveness August 1, 2010 As people across the nation count down the days to the London 2012 Olympics, final preparations for another great sporting festival are being made over 4,000 miles away in India. Much like the organisers of London 2012 hope to leave behind enduring sporting, cultural and transport legacies, the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi have been [...]
CITY HEADS OUT FOR A GLORIOUS WEEK OF RACING AT GOODWOOD July 27, 2010 HORSERACING fanatics in the City have abandoned ship again this week to head over to Glorious Goodwood, running all week until Saturday. Around 100,000 attendees are expected to descend on Goodwood over the course of the festival, with the Tote estimating its potential winnings at £2.75m from 300,000 bets. Schmoozing at the first day of [...]
The ex-Goldman man bringing his banking skills to the Olympics July 26, 2010 AS far as many people are concerned, ex-Goldman Sachs banker Paul Deighton has quite possibly the best job in the world. Today he’s precisely two years away from organising the most prestigious sporting event in the history of mankind, the Olympic Games. And so far it’s going swimmingly well, he says. And he’s still in [...]
The legacy of the Olympics will be a 21st century transport system July 26, 2010 EVERY Olympic host has a legacy. Beijing 2008’s was clearing the pollution from the city’s air so visibility was more than just a few feet, while Athens in 2004 made significant improvements to its infrastructure, including the establishment of the brand new Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport. But exactly how will London leave its mark on [...]
The father of the UK’s transport business sees recovery on the way July 25, 2010 Stagecoach’s chief executive Brian Souter has seen it all in the 30 years since he founded the bus and rail operator – but even he admits the industry is undergoing a difficult period. The transport sector, which is only just emerging from a painful recession, is about to face more pain. Chancellor George Osborne’s emergency [...]