When an e-mail pinged into Diary’s inbox this week titled “ROWBOTS power in to Broadgate Quarter”, Diary couldn’t have been happier. Perfect, we thought: the ideal Diary story for a week in which we have a big tech special in the mag. But how quickly we were disappointed. Blackstone has not fully automated its 456,000 sq ft campus at the junction of the City and Shoreditch and replaced all those trendy City fringe workers with walking, talking AIs. It has just let some space to an indoor rowing studio. Not just any rowing studio though, of course. ROWBOTS is founded by Wales, Real Madrid and Tottenham Hotspur galáctico footballer Gareth Bale. We’re glad to hear all that thinking time he has had this season sitting on the Spurs bench under Mourinho has been well spent.
Yv gt to b kddng
What’s in a name? At Standard Life Aberdeen, the answer seems to be “mostly consonants”. As if suffering from a nasty case of irritable vowel syndrome, the asset manager has banished almost all of them in its rebranding. The fund house said this week that it will change its name to Abrdn – pronounced “Aberdeen” – and that the new moniker “reflects the clarity of focus that the leadership team are bringing to the business”. Clarity isn’t the first thing that comes to mind… The Evening Standard’s Jim Armitage wondered if it might be “the worse corporate name change in history”, while there were more than a few Countdown jokes (we’ll have another vowel please, Carol/Rachel – delete according to age). Tim Heatley mulled following suit with cptl&cntrc before quipping: “However it reads like the cat walked over the keyboard.” Fund consultant John Forbes, though, wondered what the problem was. “Not sure why there is such a fuss about the change of name,” he tweeted. “Based on my father’s side of the family, who live there, removing the vowels just reflects local pronunciation.” Aberdonian dialect aside, Diary can’t help but notice that “abrdn” (for, yes, the new logo is all lower case) is an anagram of “brand”. Did some expensive design house executive manage to push this through on a bet?
The most green for your green
Diary likes to think of itself as a page of the people. It prides itself in delivering solid intelligence on which decent, ordinary, everyday folk can make informed decisions… on how to spend their spare millions. Example: this week’s research by Astons, revealing which prime London postcodes present high-end homebuyers with the most open space. Astons analysed each prime postcode based on its access to parks, commons, playing fields, golf courses, etc, and found that the W1K postcode of Mayfair and St James’s offers you the greenest neighbourhood – an impressively leafy 36.5% of the overall area. It does come at a cost, alas, with the average house setting you back just over £2m. Never fear, those on a budget, the SW1 postcode also offers a substantial amount of open space for an average price of just £1.3m, with the SW1X and SW1W codes of Knightsbridge and Belgravia offering 35.8% and 32.6% open spaces respectively. High-net-worth hay fever sufferers would be best sticking to the specific Mayfair postcode of W1S, where your £2m-plus investment will only expose you to 3.9% of open space. Diary could point out that you could probably surround yourself with fields as far as the eye can see for one-tenth of the price in other parts of the country, but those prime postcodes do come with such cachet, don’t they?
Won’t somebody think of the elderly?
In response to the City of London announcing plans for 1,500 new homes using vacant office space, Nick Sanderson, chief executive of Audley Group, got in touch to put the case for a full mix of housing types, from cradle to grave. “The perception that city living is the preserve of young people is outdated,” he told Diary, “something planners must remember. Specific provision for high-quality retirement housing is vital, for the City of London, but also as part of the plans of towns and cities across the country as they map out a different future.” Does anyone love the Square Mile so much that they want to see out their dotage there?
Lenny to the rescue
It has been a miserable year for the hotel industry, but thankfully things look a bit rosier with the nice weather, the vaccine rollout and the forthcoming summer of staycations. Premier Inn owner Whitbread may have posted a record £1bn loss, but it is looking to the future, promising to pour more than £350m into new hotels and an accompanying publicity campaign. And we’re delighted to hear that a familiar name will be part of the plan. The company took time out in its interim results to reassure us: “At the forefront of our response is a major integrated marketing campaign, ‘Rest Easy’, featuring the voice of Sir Lenny Henry, who has become synonymous with the Premier Inn brand.” Indeed he has, and we wish more businesses sprinkled their financial results with a bit of celebrity stardust in this way. If only to add a little Comic Relief.
