Focus On… Lewisham: find suburbia in Zone Two October 20, 2014 Property developers are constantly searching for the “next creative hub”, following those impoverished artists to underdeveloped places around London to find the smartest investment before the others do. South London has seen its fair share of this behaviour in recent years, with the meteoric rise of Brixton and Peckham as desirable, sociable places for young [...]
Lord Anderson’s old house up for sale in Westminster October 20, 2014 Stamped on the wall outside number four Lord North Street is a marking urging residents to proceed to their bomb shelters when the air raid sirens rang out. It’s an eternal allusion to the illustrious past behind one of Westminster’s largest homes currently on sale in one of the borough’s most famous roads. In her [...]
Flat markets hurt IG Group’s income as traders cut activity September 17, 2014 Revenues slumped at IG Group over the three months to August as low volatility left little room for its trading clients to act, the firm said yesterday. Incomes dropped nine per cent from £93.6m to £85.6m. Every country was hit – the smallest drop came in the UK, where revenues fell three per cent to [...]
Alibaba IPO: Jack Ma disappoints investors by missing London roadshow September 17, 2014 Jack Ma left capital-based investors disappointed by failing to turn up for the London leg of Alibaba’s international roadshow this afternoon. Alibaba was in town this afternoon ahead of its much-anticipated IPO, widely expected to be the biggest in history, but company founder and chairman Jack Ma was not present. In an attempt [...]
John Lewis Christmas advert 2014: Why are John Lewis festive ads such a big thing? And can Monty the Penguin live up to expectations? November 6, 2014 It’s not Christmas without an emotional, heart-warming, sometimes tear-jerking, advert from John Lewis. The unveiling of each new ad has become the unofficial kick-off of the festive period- move over Coca-Cola Santa, this year there's Monty the Penguin. Last year’s, featuring an animated bear and a hare, was the most popular yet with more than 13m [...]
Career boost? Make use of Secret Santa December 10, 2014 You don’t have to splash too much cash to impress your superiors this Christmas. With the Christmas party season reaching its climax this week, Brits are set to spend over £38m on Secret Santa gifts for their colleagues. And according to our recent poll of workers in the capital, Londoners are among the most [...]
Car review: The new Land Rover Discovery Sport has everything you need for extreme winter driving December 22, 2014 There was a moment when I thought Land Rover had made a terrible misjudgement. Iceland in December. It was always likely to be cold, but the blizzard we hit driving from Reykjavik to our hotel was biting, with horizontal snow and visibility down to a few metres. The impenetrable darkness didn’t help matters, given we [...]
Why the relentless pursuit of youth is a terrible recruitment strategy November 8, 2014 As a culture we celebrate the ideal of youth. We invent names by which to define it – we talk about ‘millennials’ or ‘Gen x/y/z’ – and as employers we court it, using recruitment initiatives designed to vacuum up new talent. And, perhaps most visibly, we celebrate it in popular culture and politics. Of course [...]
Super Bowl XLIX 2015 adverts: Watch Budweiser’s Lost Dog, NoMore.org’s domestic violence PSA, Bud Light’s Pac Man and T-Mobile’s Kim Kardashian videos February 1, 2015 Some 184m Americans are expected to tune into the Super Bowl this year to watch the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks showdown. While American football is nowhere near that popular here in the UK (although it is growing), chances are many more of us have seen a Super Bowl advert shared on our screens [...]
Boohoo share price soars after reporting accelerating sales growth September 12, 2014 Boohoo's share price soared six per cent this morning after revealing revenues will be up nearly a third for its first half. The etailer, which went public in March, is expecting revenues to rise 31 per cent to £67m for the six months to August 31, it said in a trading update this morning, [...]