Terra Firma-backed Garden Centre Group sees profit fall October 2, 2012 THE GARDEN Centre Group, the 129-store chain snapped up by Guy Hands’ private equity firm Terra Firma in April, yesterday posted a small dip in pre-tax profits despite growing year on year revenue by nearly ten per cent. The garden centre, which employs 5,000 people across the country, reported a pre-tax profit of £586,000 for [...]
Greece prepares to lease islands as kickstarts privatisation drive September 12, 2012 GREECE has identified up to 40 islands that could be leased to developers in a desperate bid to reduce its debt, in order to receive further international aid. The country which has 6,000 islands, many of which are uninhabited, plans to lease the land to developers for up to 50 years enabling them to build [...]
Rapid responses January 8, 2013 Planning inflation [Re: Daft planning rules are pushing up the price of food in shops, yesterday] While it is always good for an article about planning policy to focus on commercial property rather than housing, and while the academics cited may have delivered interesting papers, let’s not use this work to justify more fiddling with [...]
Morale on Wall Street bucks weak US data September 20, 2012 THE DOW industrials ended slightly higher last night while the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq cut most of the day’s losses in a sign that investor sentiment remains generally positive despite several weak manufacturing surveys from around the world. Pockets of strength included housing, with an index of housing stocks up 0.8 per cent, following [...]
Bovis leader calls for lenders to raise awareness of NewBuy August 20, 2012 THE CHIEF executive of Bovis Homes yesterday called for banks to take further action to promote the government’s NewBuy scheme as first-time home buyers remain left in the dark. David Ritchie praised the scheme, which offers 95 per cent loan-to-value mortgages, but said reservations were still trickling in at three or four per week. “What [...]
Capital & Counties gets cash to help it expand Covent Garden September 19, 2012 PROPERTY group Capital & Counties (Capco) yesterday raised £149.1m to help fund its ambitious plans for Covent Garden. The firm placed 68.4m shares at 218p per share, or a 1.1 per cent discount to Tuesday’s closing price. Capco said the funds will be used to help fund its £200m plans to snap up more properties [...]
Marks & Spencer shakes up its general merchandising team September 4, 2012 MARKS & SPENCER yesterday said it has hired Stephanie Chen, a senior director at House of Fraser, to be its new director of kidswear and home, as it revealed a shake-up of its general merchandising team. The retailer said John Dixon had made changes to the team as he prepares to take up his new [...]
The world’s finest watches come to London November 1, 2012 FOR the fan of fine watches, it’s not necessarily the easiest thing to saunter into your nearest high-end boutique and ask to be shown the most spectacular timepieces on earth, thank you very much. Haute horlogerie is a world of rare objects that can take weeks, even months, to produce in extremely low volumes via [...]
Public finances put chancellor in the spotlight September 16, 2012 CHANCELLOR George Osborne will be under the spotlight again this week, with the release of the UK’s public finance figures for August. Last month’s shock news – that the deficit grew by £600m rather than falling by £2.8bn in July – means Friday’s figures will give an even clearer indication of whether the government can [...]
Light trading in US ahead of Jackson Hole August 29, 2012 US stocks edged higher yesterday in the lightest trading of the year as investors waited for a key speech by Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke on Friday. Daily volume this week has been very low, even for a seasonally slow period, with the market recording three of the four lowest volume full sessions of 2012. [...]