Good morning.
It seems as if things have turned a corner. The gold medals are coming in, the Covid numbers are going down…
And the last of the Persimmon trio who trousered £185m in bonuses is leaving the housebuilder. The departure of group finance director Mike Killoran(£) is being seen as a turning point for the firm.
On the markets, NewRiver’s shares rose by 2.7% yesterday, after it agreed to sell its Hawthorn pubs portfolio to Admiral Taverns for £222.3m.
Salcombe(£), the Devon seaside town known to some as Chelsea-on-Sea(£), has taken drastic action to stop the rise of second homes.
Digital bank Starling(£) has moved quickly to bring Fleet Mortgages(£) under its wing.
Meanwhile, mortgage rates(£) could drop as low as 0.75% as the price war between lenders continues.
Joseph Homes has received Gravesend borough’s blessing to build 1,500 homes at its Albion Waterside scheme in Kent.
Meanwhile, Hadley Property Group and Clarion Housing Group have been awarded planning permission for their first joint venture, 568 flats on the site of a former Homebase in Ilford.
But rules to ensure that developers provide a net gain to biodiversity are hogwash, say scientists in The Times (£).
And finally, whither Philip Morris’s flagship IQOS stores(£)? The 16 outlets were opened in 2019 to much fanfare, with the tobacco giant confidently claiming that the “heated tobacco” product – neither vape nor smoke! – would revolutionise the market. It would be impossible to keep up with the demand as cigarette smokers made the switch! More than a hundred stores would be needed in England alone! Instead, the fag-firm-turned-ventilator-investor is quietly closing them all. PMI’s plans for IQOS to its route to a “smoke-free future” appear to have gone up in smoke.
