Good morning,
Walgreens has pulled the plug on its planned sale of Boots, saying that an “unexpected and dramatic change” in market conditions meant bidders were not able to offer the £7bn it thinks the 2,200-store business is worth.
Meanwhile, short-seller Jim Chanos is taking up positions worth several hundred million dollars against US REITS that own data centres. He believes that their biggest clients – Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure – have in fact become competitors and will prefer to build the real estate themselves.
The government is failing to enact the policies needed to reach the UK’s net zero targets, says Climate Change Commission chair Lord Deben, aka former Conservative environment secretary John Gummer. He fears it could renege on its pledges altogether.
And it was while he was in government that Prince Charles pressured ministers to change laws to benefit his landed estate. The heir to the throne has been revealed to have used the “Queen’s consent” process to get exemptions from the 1993 Leasehold Reform Act.
The party is over for Airbnb. The holiday lettings platform has said it will make permanent its Covid ban on party houses.
Purplebricks has delayed its annual results because its auditor, Deloitte, needs more time to assess its new processes.
Ministers have just hours to finalise plans to cut a fifth of civil service jobs. Government efficiency minister Jacob Rees-Mogg wants to reduce headcount by at least 90,000 and release office space. Cabinet secretary Simon Case says they should just work from home. But some ministers have a better wheeze: just rename them “public sector workers”.
If you are going to work from home, you’d better not live in Nottingham. It has been named the worst city in Britain for internet outages.
Meanwhile, Aston Villa Football Club is consulting on plans to redevelop its stadium one stand at a time. A bit like a Mexican wave.
The resurrected Notre Dame cathedral will be surrounded by trees and will leak water to cool itself down.
And finally, Hong Kong’s property elite are paying $16,000 for a luxury trip to Japan to buy up real estate bargains. While the yen is at a 24-year low, the Chinese investors will be tempted by discounted hotels while feasting on $440 appetisers at Sushi Yoshitake, including abalone in a sauce made from its own liver. The hotels sound more appetising.
