How London can smash through the brick ceiling limiting housing supply April 9, 2014 OVER four days, 300 people queued in a field by Heathrow to buy a home. It was 1964, and for £50 people could fulfil their homeowning dream in the soon-to-be-built suburb of Sunbury-on-Thames. The first 187 people did. Those odds don’t feel dissimilar to those faced by Londoners in today’s booming property market. The answer [...]
Ultra Electronics moving into forensics with £50m takeover April 28, 2014 ULTRA Electronics, the FTSE 250 defence, security and transport firm, yesterday agreed to acquire Forensic Technology WAI, a provider in automated firearm ballistics identification and forensic analysis systems. The deal is worth around C$94m (£50.7m), with the addition of C$6m depending on Forensic’s earnings over the next two years. The management team, which includes the [...]
New York Report: S&P 500 soars to fresh record April 2, 2014 THE S&P 500 closed at another record high yesterday as signs of steady private-sector hiring suggested that the economy was slowly building momentum after a winter-related pullback. That also put more focus on Friday’s government jobs data, which is among the most widely watched economic indicators. Yesterday’s data from payrolls processor ADP showed US private-sector [...]
Explaining Britain’s housing crisis with one simple chart April 15, 2014 Want to understand what’s driving stunning UK house price growth? The answer lies with a lack of planning permits, says Sam Bowman, research director at the Adam Smith Institute. Data released todays shows headline inflation has fallen to an October 2009 low, trundling along at 1.6 per cent in the year to March. Yet house [...]
Explaining Britain’s housing crisis with one simple chart April 15, 2014 Want to understand what's driving stunning UK house price growth? The answer lies with a lack of planning permits, says Sam Bowman, research director at the Adam Smith Institute. Data released todays shows headline inflation has fallen to an October 2009 low, trundling along at 1.6 per cent in the year to March. Yet house [...]
Demand for UK workers sends wages higher May 8, 2014 THE RAPID drop in UK unemployment is exacerbating the UK’s skills shortage, according to a report released today, with staff availability to fill vacancies plummeting at the fastest rate in more than a decade. The latest report on jobs from the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) and KPMG shows that availability for new permanent positions [...]
Letters to the Editor – 10/04 – Housebuilding, Liberal vision, Best of Twitter April 9, 2014 Housebuilding [Re: How London can smash through the brick ceiling limiting housing supply, yesterday] A better idea would be to abolish the contradictory demand that developers build “affordable housing”, which actually puts the price of other properties up, thereby harming affordability. The housebuilding market is effectively constrained by such entry barriers. They mean that most development [...]
Barclays’ Ashok Vaswani is hoping to turn around the UK’s most broken industry July 27, 2014 "My name is Ashok Vaswani. My role is to listen to customers, to make sure we give them what they want.” This understates his job title somewhat. Vaswani is Barclays’ CEO of personal and corporate banking, a powerful new job which has seen him take control of its global operations in retail, business and [...]
Wonga chaos as boss quits after just six months May 22, 2014 PAYDAY lender Wonga is on its third chief executive in just six months after Niall Wass yesterday announced his departure . He took the job only in November, after joining the digital loans company in January 2013 as chief operating officer. Wass took over from founder Errol Damelin, who stepped back to become chairman late last [...]
Wonga chaos as boss quits after just six months May 22, 2014 PAYDAY lender Wonga is on its third chief executive in just six months after Niall Wass yesterday announced his departure . He took the job only in November, after joining the digital loans company in January 2013 as chief operating officer. Wass took over from founder Errol Damelin, who stepped back to become chairman late last [...]