Carillion awarded £300m Dubai hotels contract May 22, 2014 LONDON-LISTED construction services firm Carillion yesterday said that its joint venture business in the Middle East has signed contracts to build two new luxury hotels in Dubai, worth a total of £300m. As part of the agreement, Al Futtaim Carillion will construct a luxury 435-room hotel resort for Jumeirah Group, which will be located next [...]
Will London property prices keep going up? Here are five factors that could decide May 12, 2014 The London property market did rather better than anyone might have thought during the recession, which has led experts to ask what could happen in the boom, what are the constraints and how London will adapt if it is to continue to grow at its current rate? These are some of the question CBRE’s [...]
Woodford backs British pharma sector with fund July 6, 2014 NEIL Woodford, one of the best-known fund managers in the City, has backed the under-siege UK pharmaceutical sector with his new fund. Woodford’s £1.6bn equity income fund, launched last week, has ploughed 8.3 per cent of the fund into Astrazeneca and 7.1 per cent into Glaxosmithkline, the UK’s biggest drug maker, making the companies the [...]
Why won’t Labour have lunch with the City? We’d welcome an honest debate July 29, 2014 WHEN Labour left power in 1979, many of the party’s grandees and politicians accepted invitations to have lunch with me and a coterie of City bankers. Harold Wilson, James Callaghan, Peter Shore and Eric Heffer numbered among those who agreed to some gentle hospitality, providing an opportunity for all parties to exchange views and ideas [...]
Bottom Line: Don’t expect glorious returns buying TSB May 27, 2014 NO BANK wants to be exciting or glamorous any more – and particularly not one that needs to attract new investors. TSB is highlighting its long history as a 200 year old bank with roots in local savings. Its goals sound more like those of a very sober and old fashioned building society than those of [...]
Euro periphery powers growth as France flops June 23, 2014 THE PERIPHERAL euro economies are growing at a faster pace than Germany for the first time in eight years, as French businesses hint that the country’s weak growth has stopped entirely. Figures from Markit’s Eurozone purchasing managers’ index (PMI) in June suggest that the currency bloc’s pace of growth remains sluggish. June’s figure of 52.8, [...]
Why Britain’s housing crisis risks turning into catastrophe June 3, 2014 THE HOUSING crisis – worst in London, but bad across Britain – is fundamentally driven by lack of supply. For the past five years, we have been building fewer houses than in any peacetime period since before World War One. But house building has been on a downwards trend since the 1960s. Reasonable estimates suggest [...]
Why Britain’s housing crisis risks turning into catastrophe June 3, 2014 THE HOUSING crisis – worst in London, but bad across Britain – is fundamentally driven by lack of supply. For the past five years, we have been building fewer houses than in any peacetime period since before World War One. But house building has been on a downwards trend since the 1960s. Reasonable estimates suggest [...]
Wall St The Week Ahead: Investors want the good oil on energy stocks April 27, 2014 SINCE late February, when investors fell out of love with biotechnology and other high-flying stocks, the market’s fuel has been oil. Energy names have been the best-performing sector in the S&P 500 since February 25 when the selloff in high-growth stocks began. The sector will look to build on recent gains when bellwethers Exxon Mobil, [...]
Balfour Beatty sells stakes in two UK assets to Dalmore for £97m June 2, 2014 INFRASTRUCTURE firm Balfour Beatty yesterday said it is selling its stakes in two public-private partnership (PPP) projects, worth a total of £97m, as part of its disposal strategy to fund future investments. The FTSE 250-listed company, which is searching for a new chief executive, has sold its 50 per cent stake in the University Hospital [...]