What’s ticking? News from the bleeding edge of haute horologie, from Tom Hardy at Bremont to the new Panerai boutique May 1, 2018 Breitling drops its wings The professional pilot’s favourite watchmaker is undergoing a sky-to-ground shake-up right now, at the experienced hands of ex-IWC CEO, Georges Kern. For a start, he’s shifting the venerable chronograph brand’s main focus away from the air, controversially dropping the wings logo from all dials and ranking ‘land’ and ‘sea’ sectors equally. [...]
Who owns London? The capital’s biggest landowners: Qataris own as much land as the Queen and TfL put together March 17, 2017 A company part-owned by the Qataris own almost as much land in the capital as Transport for London and the Queen put together, a new ranking has suggested, while the City of London was ranked second. Figures compiled by Datscha for property trade bible Property Week showed Canary Wharf Group, which is joint-owned by Qatari [...]
Liverpool Echo Arena car park fire “to cost insurers more than £2m on car payouts alone” January 1, 2018 The New Year’s Eve fire that destroyed as many as 1,400 cars in a multi-storey car park next to Liverpool’s Echo Arena could end up costing insurers £2m at the very least, City A.M. understands. Firefighters were called to the car park at 4:42pm yesterday afternoon, but were still battling to contain the blaze, which [...]
Commercial property investment in London’s West End hits record high of £1.93bn in the first quarter of 2017 April 3, 2017 Commercial property investment in London’s West End has hit a record high of £1.93bn in the first quarter of 2017, driven by buyers from Hong Kong. According to Cushman & Wakefield (C&W), the figure is up by 22 per cent on the five-year first quarter average, surpassing the West End’s previous record of £1.8bn in [...]
BP’s invested in electric car charging startup FreeWire January 30, 2018 BP is turning to a tech startup, making an investment in the maker of mobile charging points for electric cars. The oil major is putting $5m (£3.5m) into FreeWire, a three-year-old San-Francicsco tech company, as part of a series A funding round with other investors via its corporate venture arm. Read more: Daimler has invested [...]
For King and Country: As Swaziland celebrates 50 years of independence, the king took to the stage to make an astonishing announcement June 8, 2018 Portraits of the Lion and the Great She Elephant — King Mswati III and his mother — stare down from the wall of the immigration office. The animal print pattern of the king’s tribal dress seems a world away from the border-bureaucracy of entry stamps and customs forms, but it’s part of the dichotomy of [...]
Ping pong king Adam Breeden plots stock exchange float in next five years February 5, 2018 Bounce founder Adam Breeden has said he wants to put his company on the London or New York Stock Exchange in the next five years. Breeden, who also co-founded darts bar Flight Club and is bringing a minigolf concept calledPuttshack to London this year, said that the rate at which the business was growing made [...]
Range Rover SUV hybrid electric review: This PHEV could get you through your commute petrol free January 9, 2018 A decade ago, you couldn’t park up an SUV in London without risking it being covered by faux parking tickets castigating you as a gas-guzzling planet-destroyer. So intense was the kickback from green groups, Land Rover even invested in an official carbon off-setting scheme. All new cars carried big stickers on their windscreen proclaiming their [...]
Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos buys two exploration licenses in Northern Gas Fields West of Shetland November 21, 2017 Ineos, the chemicals giant owned by billionaire Jim Ratcliffe, as been shopping again, buying a majority share in two exploration licenses in a North Sea gas field with estimated reserves of as much as 5 trillion cubic feet. The acquisition of the licenses for the Northern Gas Fields West of Shetland, which it bought from [...]
Venezuela is a socialist horror show – time for the British left to admit it February 23, 2018 What do you do if you are a tyrannical leader who has run your country’s economy into the ground, devalued its currency to the point where you can barely afford the paper that banknotes are printed on, and face fierce public and political opposition? If you are President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, the answer is [...]