Optimal climate for success: House of Kaizen’s David Shiell talks Australian luddism and CRO October 11, 2015 Over the last few years, conversion rate optimisation (CRO) has been seen as a silver bullet for a company wanting to leverage existing web traffic and increase revenues, at a relatively low price. CRO is about maximising an audience’s engagement with an advert, but the process itself is exceedingly complex, as David Shiell, chief executive [...]
Hedge fund Marshall Wace lends support to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s economic policy People’s QE September 23, 2015 One of Britain's wealthiest hedge fund managers has leant weight to what's arguably the cornerstone of new Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn's economic policies – so-called People's QE. People's QE would involve the Bank of England (BoE) investing "in large-scale housing, energy, transport and digital projects". But critics, including Bank of England governor Mark Carney, have [...]
Stephen Greenhalgh: “Buy to leave” investors are pricing Londoners out of the property market – this is how I’d tackle it July 31, 2015 Often it is the non doms in London who are given a really bad press for inflating the property market. However I believe that it is the "non res" rather than the non dom that London should really worry about. The global non resident super rich see London residential property as a holiday home [...]
Ukip MP Douglas Carswell hits out at CBI and says support for Out campaign is growing November 16, 2015 Former Tory backbencher Douglas Carswell was in a bullish mood when we met last Thursday, insisting that the Out campaign had enjoyed its best week so far. Carswell, now the UK Independence Party’s sole MP, believes that David Cameron’s “vacuous demands” over EU reform provided a boost to the eurosceptic side of the debate. “There’s nothing [...]
International students splash out £600m in rent on flats in London September 8, 2015 London’s international student population is contributing £600m in rent to the capital, new research shows, with some of the wealthiest students spending three times the average UK worker on their home. The student property sector has boomed in recent years thanks to rising student numbers and an undersupply of flats to house them, with UK [...]
Reforms spark frenzy of offices turned into flats September 10, 2015 CHANGES introduced by the government to make it easier to convert offices into residential properties helped to create around 7,600 homes in England last year at the expense of 6m square feet of office space, new research shows. In 2013, the coalition government introduced new rights allowing office buildings to be converted to residential without [...]
Interest rate rise by the Bank of England is the “greatest risk” to house prices July 24, 2015 House price growth for this year is on track to hit double-digit figures in a number of cities across Britain – providing the Bank of England doesn't hike interest rates anytime soon. House prices in the 20 cities monitored by Hometrack's cities house price index rose 6.3 per cent in the first half of 2015, and look set [...]
Buy-to-let enthusiasm can drive new supply if we demolish housing barriers July 28, 2015 It was at the time of another landmark Budget – Nigel Lawson’s in 1988 – that the UK’s rental market as we know it first began to emerge. The Housing Act’s deregulation measures of the same year, notably liberalising rents, set the scene for rapid growth in the private rented sector. This was fuelled by [...]
Rare his ‘n’ hers houses go on sale in Kensington July 23, 2015 Campden Hill Road, Kensington, £12.75m each Everybody needs a bit of space in their relationships, but if you feel you need more than most, then these twin houses may be the perfect solution. Two identical semi-detached houses have entered the market in Kensington. Complete mirror images of one another inside and out, Hyde House [...]
Challenger bank Aldermore looking as safe as houses in third quarter results, as residential mortgages push up lending, but share price drops November 12, 2015 Aldermore has today reported loan growth of about £1bn over the last nine months, bringing total net loans to customers to £5.8bn, an increase of 20 per cent from the end of December. In its third-quarter results for 2015, the challenger bank, which was set up by former Barclays executive Phillip Monks, said it was on [...]