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’Safe haven alternatives, London property edition
As FT Alphaville and others have duly noted, the search for the ultimate safe haven alternative is on.
RBS now points to one possible alternative, London luxury-home prices.
From their European rates morning research note:
Licence to Kreil
Investing is difficult. Fortunately, there are wise heads willing to share all of their wisdom and experience in exchange for a modest fee.
Anton Kreil, the portfolio manager in the BBC programme that let eight members of the public trade $1m (£620,000) and run their own hedge fund,
CNH centre: coming to a City near you?
We knew that China’s efforts to internationalise the RMB were moving along nicely, but thus far CNH deposits (yuan held offshore in Hong Kong) are still a relatively small part of China’s total deposit base.
Cold shouldered by the Takeover Panel
Things you probably didn’t know about the City of London.
The first in an irregular series starts with Wednesday’s news that the Takeover Panel — the body which polices all mergers & acquisition activity in the UK — has “cold shoulder”
The FTSE 100′s close shave
The UK’s FTSE 100 barely avoided falling below 5,000 during a sudden plunge on Thursday afternoon, one hour before closing down 1.65 per cent at 5073.13:
While this chart shows the FTSE 100′s part in a general Eurocrash:
Sino-Russian finance
A date for Asian diaries:
Event: Russia – Capital Raising and Investment Summit – Hong Kong
When: April 12 – 14
Where: The Four Seasons, HK
Keynote Speaker: Ronald Joseph Arculli, chairman of Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Ltd.
Tories ready to deal with EU for City’s sake
Shadow chancellor George Osborne has promised the City that a Eurosceptic Conservative government would not become isolated in Europe and that it would be “prepared to trade” with other member states to defend Britain’s financial services sector.
Kazakh groups to shift away from London
Companies from Kazakhstan plan to move part of their fundraising away from London, according to the country’s central bank governor, because UK investors failed to stand by the central Asian state during the financial crisis.
Financials magic bus tour
If you’re a financials CEO, the highlight of your week will no doubt be Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s ginormous banking and insurance CEO conference in London.
The agenda is available here. Sharp-eyed readers will note that every major European bank CEO is scheduled to speak except one.
When fashion meets finance (sort of)
Bad things always seem to happen when fashion and finance collide.
We wonder if American Express is rethinking its latest PR move – giving 600 cardholders access to an exclusive runway show by New York designer Phillip Lim.
RBS’s sticky situation
Poor RBS.
In addition to superglueing their hands to the trading floor of the bank’s London HQ, environmental protesters are making fun of the company’s M&A history.
Sky News reports:
Environmental campaigners have glued their hands to the trading floor of RBS in the City of London,
The Halabi CMBS crunch
Simon Halabi, the property magnate, has 10 working days to remedy a default on a £1.15bn loan secured against one of the largest portfolios of central London property.That was June 20. A remedy did not emerge and,
Swiss tax rules lure McDonald’s from UK
McDonald’s is to leave London for Geneva, joining the growing ranks of US companies moving their European headquarters to take advantage of preferential intellectual property tax laws, the FT said. The fast-food group,
Structured finance sets London afire
No, really.
A major fire has been blazing along Dean Street, central London, for most of Friday afternoon, forcing evacuations and causing Oxford Street to be closed to traffic in both directions.
As Sky News reported:
Darling’s banking reforms attacked
Alistair Darling’s blueprint for reforming the financial regulatory regime on Wednesday failed to impress the City and drew withering fire from the Conservatives, who vowed to reverse the report’s main proposals should the party win the next election,
Pirates of London
So, it isn’t unreasonable to expect Somali Pirates to be powered by Bloomberg afterall. From the Guardian:
…pirate groups have “well-placed informers” in London who are in regular contact with control centres in Somalia where decisions on which vessels to attack are made.
Snow banker
Sits by RBC,
Liquidity is frozen,
So are his assets.
UK plc closed
Are you a foreign contractor trying to make a delivery?
Perhaps you have an urgent international deal to sign-off on?
Dear rest of the world,
We regret to inform you that UK plc will most likely be closed for the whole of Monday,
London Gatwick, the saga continues
News broke last week that airport operator Hochtief’s bid for London’s Gatwick airport had been excluded.
The reason? According to Bloomberg’s unnamed sources:
Essen-based Hochtief submitted an initial offer that was too low,
London property datapoint du jour
Actually not quite du jour. This one’s from Saturday’s FT Weekend. It’s the percentage change in the average price of prime central London property from Sep. 2007 to Jan. 2009, adjusted for currency fluctuations:
Anton Kreil: The biography
Anton Kreil is making the most of his Million Dollar Traders publicity, launching his own website yesterday.
Of particular interest is the former Goldman Sachs trader’s 1,700-word biography, reprinted below.
Slump hits London’s richest homeowners
Homeowners in some of London’s wealthiest areas are feeling the full impact of the property slump, data published by the Land Registry yesterday showed. Last month, house prices in Kensington and Chelsea – which were rising at an annualised rate of 33.5 per cent a year ago – fell by 2.0 per cent,
London faces finance jobs shake-out
London is set to lose about 194,000 jobs in the next two years as the credit crunch takes its toll on the financial services sector, according to a leading consultancy. Oxford Economics predicts employment in the capital will be hit more than in any other UK region.