Good morning.
The sun is out in Cannes, and the MIPIM effect is already making itself known. EG has the first of our video reports from La Croisette. And as the Club Peloton cyclists arrive in the South of France, it is clear that MIPIM has returned with a Cannes-do attitude.
AXA IM has said that not only does it want to invest a lot more in the UK – to redress a post-Brexit imbalance – but it would also be quite keen on a second City skyscraper(£).
Meanwhile, Far East Consortium has bought the 1.4m sq ft Vauxhall Square scheme in Nine Elms, SW8, from Guangzhou R&F Properties for £95.7m. The sale price marks a notable loss for R&F, which agreed to buy the site from CLS for almost £158m in 2017.
And CBRE is continuing its buying spree, adding Oxford-based life sciences specialist VSL and Partners.
But the shadow of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues to hang over the market. Shares in Russian real estate investor Raven Property Group fell by a further third yesterday, after being told it will be removed from the FTSE index.
As more than 120,000 Brits offer to house Ukrainian refugees(£).
The UK will impose sanctions on a further 370 Russians, following the passage of the Economic Crime Act.
And Everton Football Club(£) is in talks to secure new financing for its £500m stadium project, after cutting ties with sanctioned Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov
In other news, Foxtons(£) is being urged to sell itself by an activist investor. Converium, which owns 2% of the London-focused agent, says a sale at 100p per share is the only way to give value to shareholders, after share prices fell by 40% to 31.5p in the last six months.
The FCA has rejected calls to pay more compensation to victims of the London Capital & Finance scandal(£). It has handed out a mere £34,000 to just four people.
HSBC(£) is to shut even more branches(£) as it switches more of its business online. It has cut nearly a third of its branches over the past two years.
Burkina Faso-born Francis Kéré(£) has become the first African architect to win the Pritzker Prize.
And there is still time to submit your entry for this year’s EG Tech Awards.
And finally, are we any closer to answering the vexed question: “What does levelling up mean?” You might hope so, after the government spent a sizeable sum on a series of posters spelling out its answers across billboards in Scotland. “Levelling up means £68m to reopen the world-famous Burrell Collection”, reads one. Oh, great. That’s pretty clear then. Only it turns out that isn’t what levelling up means at all. In fact, the poster, and others, have been reported to the Advertising Standards Agency for misleading the public. In the Burrell case, the complaints pointed out, Glasgow City Council was responsible for £33m of the £68m, while the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the Scottish government and private donors provided a further £30.25m. The Westminster government did pledge £5m, but this was from a Covid recovery grant, not from a levelling up pot. Perhaps this is the answer to what levelling up actually means for the government – spending no new money while claiming the credit for everyone else’s investment. Maybe they should write that on the side of a bus?
