It has been said and written with such earnest despair to have become practically axiomatic: 22 will prove a year of acute pressure on household finances across the UK, the first year of what could prove many. This narrative invariably includes the warning that the UK faces years of tensions between its Parliament and that […]
The country’s declining fertility is an underrated cause of the 20th century’s misfortunes. Britain’s population will soon be in natural decline, so that over the course of the 2020s we’ll see 60,000 more deaths than births. We knew that this point was coming, but the ONS had previously estimated it occurring sometime in the following decade. Unlike […]
Why they beat the rest of the high street as a retail experience. A bone china teapot, a pair of leather brogues, a poetry book, a velvet coat, an embroidered tablecloth and a saucepan. These are just a few of the things I have recently bought from charity shops – where someone else’s trash became my […]
Originally published November 2021. It’s not often that I agree with Donald Trump, but on one thing he is surely right; the UK’s new American Embassy in Nine Elms was a “lousy deal”. From Grosvenor Square to Nine Elms was quite a downgrade. The building looked rather good in the architect’s CGIs, but the actualité […]
Originally published March 2021. The collapse of Greensill involved a predicable cast of unwise enablers, but it should serve as a warning to the growing number of alternative asset buyers on the dangers of complex deals which promise much but deliver less. Due diligence is critical in the highly illiquid alternatives sector. You really can’t […]
Re-alignment in a post-Covid world Despite successful vaccination programmes and economic support policies, Covid-19 continues to impact our real estate markets. As the pandemic posts its latest resurgence, most European governments have been able to successfully limit its economic impact. This is offering a different environment for real estate as well, triggering the question how […]
Not yet, but further change is needed. The harbingers of doom have been ringing the death knoll on the UK high street for some time now. The Great Financial Crisis, the tightening stranglehold of online retailing, surging operational costs, the normalising of Company Voluntary Agreements, political uncertainty around Brexit and the ifs and buts of […]
During the Great Lockdown of 2020, les Echos reported the touristic town of Cannes was one of the five places in France worst affected, alongside Disneyland and Paris CDG airport. Last week, after two years away, I got to see a different-looking Cannes. During the past 20 months of restricted international travel, the iconic Carlton, […]
The news on 2 December will have brought a beaming smile to the person responsible for the morning meeting at the Bank of England. They will have been able to leave all the house copies of the Financial Times open at this page. UK household wealth reaches record high despite economic hit from Covid. Such […]
Originally published September 2021. The case of the London and Paris office markets. While the global framework of the Paris Accord is gradually being incorporated into national laws in Europe, incentives for property investors to take part in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions are growing. Non-compliance with the new regulations represents a risk for […]
