Gladedale hit by £78m loss after crisis fix August 30, 2010 BRITAIN’S largest private housebuilder crashed to a £78m loss last year as a debt-for-equity swap and a group restructuring piled costs onto its struggling balance sheet. The Gladedale Group, whose projects include the luxury Quartermile housing development in Edinburgh, fell heavily into the red after a huge overhaul in the autumn that wiped out its [...]
How to turn Cameron’s vision of an entrepreneurial decade into a reality November 18, 2010 DAVID Cameron has called on the nation’s “doers-and-grafters, inventors and entrepreneurs” to save us from our troubled finances. He’s not wrong. According to research commissioned by Enterprise UK, a rise of just one per cent in self-employment rates could boost the UK’s GDP by around 1.5 per cent and add approximately £22bn to the UK economy. [...]
How to turn Cameron’s vision of an entrepreneurial decade into a reality November 18, 2010 DAVID Cameron has called on the nation’s “doers-and-grafters, inventors and entrepreneurs” to save us from our troubled finances. He’s not wrong. According to research commissioned by Enterprise UK, a rise of just one per cent in self-employment rates could boost the UK’s GDP by around 1.5 per cent and add approximately £22bn to the UK economy. [...]
Bovis moves back into profit March 8, 2010 HOUSEBUILDER Bovis is steaming ahead with plans to invest in new land after returning to profit in 2009. The FTSE 250 group says it has restarted its land acquisition scheme with four sites with planning consent snapped up in the fourth quarter of 2009 and terms agreed on another 15. It had £122m net cash [...]
Square Mile roadworks are a necessary evil August 22, 2010 LAST week, London First published a report entitled “Road Sense”, looking at how to best strike a balance between the costs and benefits of works taking place on the streets of London. As anyone who visits the City with any degree of regularity will be able to testify, streetworks (for, traditionally, there are no highways [...]
Service sector activity in new slump September 3, 2010 Service sector activity grew last month at its slowest pace since April 2009, with a marked fall in hiring as employers worried about an economic slowdown and public spending cuts, a survey showed. The headline Markit/CIPS services purchasing managers’ index dropped to 51.3 in August from July’s 53.1, a much sharper fall than the decline [...]
Privacy laws offer City folk protection September 21, 2010 WARREN Buffet once said: “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently”. A professional reputation, much like a brand or business reputation, also takes many years to build and demands considerable further investment to nurture and grow. Such a reputation, [...]
Boost for Balfour share price July 6, 2010 SHARES of Balfour Beatty advanced as much as eight per cent yesterday after the British infrastructure giant said its order book was growing despite tighter infrastructure spending from governments throughout Europe. Balfour Beatty also reassured investors that trading has met its expectations so far this year. Its order book is expected to be ahead of [...]
Boost for Balfour share price July 6, 2010 SHARES of Balfour Beatty advanced as much as eight per cent yesterday after the British infrastructure giant said its order book was growing despite tighter infrastructure spending from governments throughout Europe. Balfour Beatty also reassured investors that trading has met its expectations so far this year. Its order book is expected to be ahead of [...]
HSBC in talks with Pinnacle consortium July 25, 2010 THE GROUP hoping to build the Pinnacle skyscraper on Bishopsgate is close to securing financing from HSBC, it emerged at the weekend. Arab Investments (AI) plans to raise £600m from the financing deal, to add to £130m secured from a 60-strong consortium of backers. AI boss Khalid Affara has been courting banks for months in [...]