Pity in the City for Lehman victims September 15, 2009 YESJEREMY HAZLEHURSTWHEN City workers lose their jobs, there will always be plenty of people who cheer. There is a perception out in the country that everybody who works in the Square Mile is an unscrupulous, greedy moneybags banker, spending their evenings wallowing in champagne and caviar. The truth is that most people who work for [...]
SAFE AS HOUSES July 21, 2009 LAND Securities chief executive Francis Salway says the real estate company plans to raise £360m through a securitisation of an office let to the Home Office – the first deal of its kind since the credit crunch took hold of the market – signaling that investor appetite for commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) may be returning. [...]
Taylor Wimpey indicates signs of market recovery August 5, 2009 HOUSEBUILDER Taylor Wimpey added to improving sentiment in the housing market yesterday by saying it saw stability in the UK and United States, although further writedowns dragged its shares lower. The company, which already wrote down the value of its land and work in progress by just over £1bn during 2008, announced a further £527m [...]
Long-term incentives no panacea for City September 20, 2009 SLOWLY but surely, the US and the European positions on regulating bonuses are becoming more similar. At the risk of courting unpopularity, it is therefore worth injecting a few facts into a discussion which to date has been characterised by hysteria and demagoguery rather than reason. It is true and deplorable that some bankers were [...]
Buy-to-let is back as rents stabilise and low prices attract landlords December 3, 2009 BUY-TO-LET is starting to look like an attractive proposition once again, as lower house prices and a stabilising rental market result in more enticing yields. Data from LSL Property Services – the company that owns Your Move and Reeds Rains estate agencies – shows that annual returns on landlords’ investments have turned positive for the [...]
Beware: we could soon face new bubble September 24, 2009 UNTIL recently, the worry about quantitative easing was that it was not working well enough, a view which has long stuck me as excessively pessimistic. But in recent days several top economists have started to express fears the policy may actually have worked too well and that all of the liquidity being injected into the [...]
Beware: we could soon face new bubble September 24, 2009 UNTIL recently, the worry about quantitative easing was that it was not working well enough, a view which has long stuck me as excessively pessimistic. But in recent days several top economists have started to express fears the policy may actually have worked too well and that all of the liquidity being injected into the [...]
London house asking prices turn positive July 19, 2009 AVERAGE asking prices for properties in London are higher now than they were a year ago, while the yearly decline for England and Wales was trimmed to 3.1 per cent, according to property website Rightmove. Rightmove figures show that the average asking price for a UK house rose by 0.6 per cent in July on [...]
Rock investors to fight on despite courtroom defeat July 28, 2009 FORMER shareholders in Northern Rock have vowed to continue their fight to be awarded compensation from the government for the loss of their holdings, after losing a legal battle yesterday. The group of 200,000 small investors, backed by major hedge fund investors SRM Global and RAB Capital, had launched an appeal disputing the High Court’s [...]
Rock investors to fight on despite courtroom defeat July 28, 2009 FORMER shareholders in Northern Rock have vowed to continue their fight to be awarded compensation from the government for the loss of their holdings, after losing a legal battle yesterday. The group of 200,000 small investors, backed by major hedge fund investors SRM Global and RAB Capital, had launched an appeal disputing the High Court’s [...]