When two don’t become one: Kensington & Chelsea clamps down on applications to combine homes April 28, 2016 First it was mega-basements, now joined homes are coming under scrutiny. The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea (RBKC) has said it is keeping a stern eye on homeowners who want to knock properties together in attempt to meet its supply targets and prevent the loss of any more homes. Research from high-end property search firm [...]
Tata Steel still considering bids for its UK assets May 25, 2016 Tata Steel is still considering bids for its loss-making UK business, despite hopes for a shortlist of bidders to be revealed after its board meeting today. The announcement came after Tata execs scrutinised the details of the bids, as well as discussing the British government's support for a potential sale in Mumbai. Finance director, Koushik Chatterjee, subsequently told reporters: [...]
Brick maker Forterra lays plans to follow rival onto the London market with £450m float March 29, 2016 Forterra, the second-largest brick maker in the UK, is laying the foundations for a £450m float on the London Stock Market, looking to build on government plans for an increase in house building. Forterra, previously Hanson’s UK building products division, will list on the London Stock Exchange next month with a free float of at least 25 per cent. [...]
Coca-Cola chief executive tops international black, Asian, and minority ethnic executive power list May 26, 2016 The boss of The Coca-Cola Company, Muhtar Kent, has topped a list of Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) bosses from around the US, UK and Ireland. The ranking, put together by executive search firm Audeliss, placed Manjit Wolstenholme, chair of Provident Financial second and Albert Cheng, chief operations officer at Amazon Studios in third. Its release follows a similar one from the House of Lords [...]
Sterling suffers historic crash as Brits back Brexit June 24, 2016 The pound has been haemorrhaging against the dollar as panic engulfs financial markets in reaction to the UK voting to leave the European Union. Sterling has racked up its worst daily fall on records that date back to 1971 — even uglier the collapse of Lehman Brothers and Black Wednesday. At one stage, the pound fell as low as $1.3224, a fall of more [...]
Crowdfunding platforms beware: The banks – and others – are eating your lunch May 5, 2016 European crowdfunding platforms could be left fighting for their piece of the pie. Incumbent financial players, including asset managers and banks, not-for-profit organisations, and non-financial firms are entering the crowdfunding business in increasing numbers. Recent research that I conducted with Politecnico di Milano’s Massimiliano Guerini, Evila Piva and Cristina Rossi-Lamastrais analysed the proliferation of crowdfunding across [...]
Focus on Notting Hill property: Prices may have fallen, but is it all down to stamp duty reform? May 19, 2016 Notting Hill hasn’t been having the best of weeks, if truth be told. On Tuesday, a report from estate agent Stirling Ackroyd revealed that average house prices had fallen in several prime central London locations. In W11, they’ve gone down by 10 per cent from the first quarter of 2015 to the first quarter of [...]
Rent-to-buy business Rentplus secures up to £70m funding as it aims to build 5,000 affordable homes by 2020 April 20, 2016 A new business aiming to build 5,000 affordable homes by 2020 has secured up to £70m in funding. Rentplus said the funds, from BAE Systems Pension Funds Investment Management, will be used to help deliver its first 580 homes. BAE has approved an initial £35m private placing of an inflation-linked bond for the company with a [...]
Parking mad: London parking spaces sold for over £200,000 May 8, 2016 LONDON is one of the world’s most expensive places to pay for parking space. On Brewer Street in Soho, for example, you could spend over £50 on just three hours of parking. That may be why some mysterious buyers have forked out as much as much as half a million pounds to buy a parking [...]
Prime central London house prices are being outpaced by outer boroughs, says Savills March 30, 2016 Prices of prime London residential properties dipped in the first quarter of the year, as uncertainty around the economic outlook and the EU referendum largely offset any investor or second home buyer rush to beat the buy-to-let stamp duty hike deadline. Values across the whole of prime London slipped by an average of 0.3 per cent in [...]