Good morning,
Workers are averaging just 1.4 days a week in the office, despite many firms having strict hybrid working rules. A recent international study has also found that staff who are required to come in to the office three times a week actually average 2.1 times a week. It concludes that a “glut of space” will need to be repurposed or sublet.
But reports suggest that the UK’s hiring boom is set to continue into the next quarter, with nearly three in four employers planning to take on more staff.
So are the predictions of doom and gloom, as heard in this week’s episode of EG Like Sunday Morning, mistaken? Sadly not.
As well as the big agencies, the world’s biggest asset managers have said they will start cutting pay as they begin to tighten their belts too.
And M&G could be broken up once its new chief executive is appointed. Investors say shackling its £150bn asset management business to a £200bn-plus retail arm is not working.
But Blackstone is doing well off its Bourne legacy. Having sold its Butlin’s real estate assets for £300m to the Universities Superannuation Scheme last month, the asset manager is now in talks to sell the Butlin’s business itself back to the Harris family, which co-founded Bourne, for another £300m.
Meanwhile, a water “national grid” that would pipe supplies across the country has been proposed by the environment secretary, George Eustice, to prevent both droughts and floods.
And 34 hospital buildings in England have concrete roofs in such a poor state of repair they could collapse at any moment, according to a government minister.
Both the City of London and Birmingham have lost 14% of their restaurants since 2020.
While Truro’s rapidly expanding Hub Box, which wants 18 more venues, says it will open everywhere except London.
And finally, Europe’s largest axe-throwing venue will soon be opening its doors at London’s Oxford Circus. The 7,000 sq ft space is the latest venue for Whistle Punks, which has somehow managed to safely combine drinking cocktails with chucking blades for six years now. With clay-pigeon shooting coming to Canary Wharf and drink-driving at One New Change, we wonder what could be next. Competitive kitten-juggling, anyone?
