Good morning. This is your AM bulletin, with all the latest news and views from EG, and a few of the best bits from around the world.
The billionaire Issa brothers are on the verge of selling a £500m chunk of Asda real estate to Macquarie Asset Management. The Australian finance house is close to buying ground rent leases linked with about 50 Asda stores in the UK.
Vistry’s shareholders have narrowly approved plans to more than double its chief executive’s annual bonus. Greg Fitzgerald is now in line to get three times his £800,000 salary in bonuses and another three times in shares, despite 45% of shareholders voting against the plans.
Persimmon will drop out of the FTSE 100 today for the first time in a decade.
And M2 Capital’s £90m rescue bid for Wilko has been blocked by administrators at PwC, after it reportedly struggled to answer “very normal questions” about its funding position.
England’s green watchdog has censured ministers for dropping nutrient neutrality rules. It says scrapping the protections to boost housebuilding will be a “regression”.
Princess Diana’s alma mater is up for sale, with Savills seeking offers for the Georgian Riddlesworth Hall in Norfolk.
And just like that, summer is over, writes EG’s editor. This week’s copy of the magazine is full of back-to-school treats, including our new “Starting Out in Real Estate” supplement aimed at 16-to-20-year-olds. “Welcome back. Let’s get to it.”
In the latest episode of the EG Property Podcast, EG talks with Geospatial Commission chief executive Thalia Baldwin and independent commissioner Alex Notay about all things data. It’s what you do with it that counts.
Further afield, China’s largest developer, Country Garden, has revealed record H1 losses of £5.3bn as it struggles to keep up with its £150bn-plus debts.
Donald Trump repeatedly overstated his net worth by more than $2bn, according to court filings. New York attorney general Letitia James has said that his net worth was “likely considerably less if his properties were actually valued in full-blown professional appraisals.”
And finally, after boasting that he would “own no house”, it appears that Elon Musk has been secretly building one at Tesla’s expense. US federal prosecutors are investigating Tesla’s use of company funds on a secret project, dubbed “Project 42”. The “spacious glass structure” has been described internally as a “Musk house” – which is either a home for the company’s chief executive or something much worse.
