Kate Allen

News, analysis and comment from the Financial Times, the worldʼs leading global business publication

News, analysis and comment from the Financial Times, the worldʼs leading global business publication

News, analysis and comment from the Financial Times, the worldʼs leading global business publication

Plans to extend Sunday shop opening hours suffered a setback after the government was defeated by 31 votes in the Commons — a reminder of the Conservatives’ fragile parliamentary majority. The government was beaten by 317 votes to 286 after being challenged by what it dubbed an “unholy alliance” of a handful of Conservative backbenchers, Labour, the Scottish National party, the Democratic Unionists, Plaid Cymru and some Liberal Democrats. The decision by the SNP to vote against the proposal wa…

A huge London housebuilding zone has received two significant boosts, with planning permission given for the redevelopment of Britain’s biggest wholesale market and ministers approving the extension of a connecting Tube line. New Covent Garden Market in south London will be redeveloped to create thousands of homes in a £2bn project, after Wandsworth council granted planning permission on Wednesday. The fruit, vegetable and flower market is part of the Nine Elms regeneration zone in Battersea,…

Scotland’s grouse moors and castles have long been a draw for the globe-trotting wealthy. They will now face a land and buildings transaction tax (LBTT) at marginal rates of up to 12 per cent – up from a current maximum of 7 per cent UK-wide stamp duty for housing and 4 per cent for commercial property. The tax will be levied by the devolved Edinburgh government on a sliding scale, with the first £135,000 of any property being tax-free. Under the current UK-wide tax regime, someone buying a £5…

Unreal City,Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,A crowd flowed over London Bridge When TS Eliot wrote those lines in the early 1920s London was a polluted, overcrowded metropolis blighted by heavy industry, poverty and slums. Forty years later city workers’ spacious new homes in airy, leafy suburbs and new towns were memorialised by John Betjeman. He wrote in 1962: One can’t be sure where London ends,New towns have filled the fields of rootWhere father and his business friendsDrove in the Lan…

News, analysis and comment from the Financial Times, the worldʼs leading global business publication

One of Britain’s least popular professions, the high street estate agent, is facing a shake-up as the digital revolution finally reaches the business of selling and renting bricks and mortar. The growing popularity of property portals Rightmove and Zoopla has made it possible for homeowners to take control out of estate agents’ hands. It has enabled the rise of online estate agencies, which offer sellers and landlords a way of advertising on the portals without having to pay the high fees that…

It is one of the world’s most instantly recognisable buildings and a symbol of the global dominance of London’s financial district. Now, it is the ignominious property casualty of the global financial crisis. The Gherkin, formally known as 30 St Mary Axe, was put up for sale this week by receivers Deloitte after they were called in by its creditors, a consortium of German banks, in April. But this is no ordinary victim of the credit crunch: the Gherkin is in good shape. It is fully let and wi…

French retail landlord Klépierre is to acquire the Netherlands’ largest listed property company, Corio, in an effort to create Europe’s biggest retail mall operator. In the all-stock deal, Klépierre will give 1.14 of its shares for every share in Corio, which has a market capitalisation of €3.5bn. The deal values Corio at a 15.6 per cent premium to its share price before the offer. Shares in Klépierre, which has a €7.2bn market capitalisation, fell 2.8 per cent to €35.35 in Paris trading. The…

The City of London’s Gherkin building has been put up for sale by administrators who hope to attract bids of at least £650m. The 41-floor tower was designed by Lord Foster for insurance company Swiss Re and opened in 2004. But the Gherkin fell into receivership this year after debts secured against the building soared. Administrators Deloitte have appointed estate agents Savills and Deloitte Real Estate to sell the building, which is thought to have a market value of at least £650m, according…

A £1bn plan to create an Asian business district in a rundown part of east London’s docklands will go ahead after the local council gave planning permission. The Asian Business Port will include 4.7m square feet of floor space in the Royal Docks area, to the east of Canary Wharf, on a site previously owned by the public sector. It aims to attract Asian companies to open European offices in east London. The project is the biggest commercial property deal to be struck by London mayor Boris Johns…

The man who shaped the City for 30 years explains why he approved its high-rise transformation

News, analysis and comment from the Financial Times, the worldʼs leading global business publication

Britain’s largest provider of purpose-built student housing, Unite Group, has acquired Cordea Savills’ 2,904-unit student accommodation portfolio in a £137m deal. Unite’s UK Student Accommodation Fund bought Cordea Savills’ Student Hall Fund properties using a combination of cash and existing debt facilities. The acquisition is the latest in a wave of dealmaking that the student accommodation sector has seen in recent months after a change in government policy boosted the sector. Chancellor G…

London’s historic Smithfield Market has been protected from partial demolition after the government ruled against a development plan. The communities secretary Eric Pickles on Tuesday turned down a £160m proposal by property investor TIAA Henderson Real Estate to convert the derelict Victorian general market and fish market buildings into shops, cafés, bars and an office block. The plans involved demolishing the roof of the general market hall and some other structures on the site, although th…

A residential development investment group is to float a cash shell on the London Stock Exchange in an attempt to raise £500m. Urban Exposure Group has signed £476m of deals to fund the construction of homes in London and the southeast of England in the past 12 months and has a pipeline of £3bn of further projects of which £858m is under contract negotiation and would be put into the new vehicle. The group was set up as a developer in 2002 by Randeesh Sandhu, a former risk analyst at Deutsche…

The Prince of Wales’s Foundation for Building Community has helped push ideas of community empowerment into the mainstream that, two decades ago or so, were considered by many to be subversive. The Foundation has developed ideas about how to shift the system from being adversarial to collaborative and how to give local people a voice and influence – a distinctly bottom-up approach. The end result, called Enquiry By Design, is a process that has been used by more than 100 local communities to cre…

Chinese state-backed insurance group China Life has taken a majority stake in one of Britain’s biggest office towers, in its first European property investment. The company along with Qatar Holding, a sovereign wealth fund subsidiary, has paid £795m to acquire 10 Upper Bank Street in London’s eastern business cluster from Canary Wharf Group. China Life took a 70 per cent stake, with Qatar Holding taking 20 per cent. Canary Wharf Group, whose parent company Songbird, is 28 per cent owned by the…