Luxury rental property platform The Plum Guide to use £14m fundraise for rapid expansion March 21, 2019 High-end property rental platform The Plum Guide, which aims to eliminate disappointment from holiday bookings, has raised £14m in a Series B funding round led by Talis Capital as it prepares to launch in six more cities. The Plum Guide, which was set up in London in 2015, will be available in Barcelona, Berlin, Copenhagen, [...]
FOMO Driving Lyft Valuation March 8, 2019 | City Talk Fear of missing out – FOMO – in financial markets is a powerful emotion. It can propel a bull market to record highs as investors watch stocks rise and want a piece of the action. It’s panic buying to a degree. And it’s just such a phenomenon that is behind investor appetite for stocks like [...]
Why the Fourth Industrial Revolution may create beach hotspots for investors February 27, 2019 | City Talk The Industrial Revolution resulted in a rail network that has influenced real estate values ever since. Now the Fourth Industrial Revolution is driving the latest wave of value creation – for certain beach locations. Our focus on this blog is on identifying the shifting fortunes of global cities. Part of this involves careful analysis of [...]
It makes smart business sense to invest in the future of refugees February 27, 2019 Amid scenes of refugees’ flight from Venezuela, it is easy to forget that the world’s largest refugee crisis remains Syria. And that’s why the UK-Jordan Conference in London tomorrow is so important. Jordan has generously provided refuge for more than 670,000 Syrian refugees fleeing their homes amid a brutal war. Its role in the stability [...]
Picture perfect: Pinterest confidentially files for IPO in the latest up and coming tech float February 22, 2019 Pinterest has reportedly filed for an initial public offering (IPO), as Silicon Valley gears up for a busy year of tech startup listings. The online image search platform, known for the food and fashion photos its users post, is planning for a late-June listing and is seeking a valuation of at least $12bn, it is reported. Read [...]
Millennium & Copthorne warns of ‘challenging’ 2019 as profits plummet 28 per cent February 15, 2019 Millennium & Copthorne warned today that it anticipates a challenging 2019 as it revealed that profits fell 28 per cent last year. The figures In its full year results, the hotel company reported that profit before tax for 2018 fell 28 per cent to £106m in 2018, down from 2017's total of £147m. Revenue also slipped [...]
How Smart Cities transform operations models February 1, 2019 | City Talk Local and national governments around the world face huge challenges in addressing the services needs and environmental issues that busy, growing modern cities present. Effective and efficient operations models are required, both for the management of urban infrastructure and for the production and delivery of products and services dependent on them. One solution has been [...]
The US government shutdown drags on, but London never closes for business January 24, 2019 As the longest government shutdown in US history rumbles on – sparked by Donald Trump’s insistence to build a border wall that Democrats in Congress have refused to grant funding for – Wall Street and Silicon Valley have been left in serious IPO limbo. Staff at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have not worked [...]
Hacking Wall Street: Are tech unicorns about to disrupt stock market flotations? January 21, 2019 Tech companies have changed the way we chat, bank, travel and date. Are they about to disrupt capital markets too? “In [Silicon] Valley there’s always been that mentality: how do we hack Wall Street?” says Rob Kniaz, a founder of tech-focused venture capital firm Hoxton Ventures. Two weeks ago reports broke that Slack, the workplace [...]
Uber, Lyft, Airbnb: Unicorn IPOs are coming in 2019 January 18, 2019 | City Talk 2019 is set to be an exciting year for IPOs. Some of the biggest floats in history are planned over the coming months. But the problem with IPOs is that the excitement wanes quickly, as 2018 proved. Here’s a look at some of the most hotly anticipated stock market debuts planned for 2019 and the [...]