When Dan Norris, UK head of real estate at Hogan Lovells, and his 10 mates booked their tickets for the Italy v England match on the opening weekend of the Six Nations, something clearly got lost in translation over in Rome. They asked for “seats all in one row”, but when they arrived at the Stadio Olimpico, what they got wasn’t quite what they had in mind. But Norris (second from front) and the others did at least become temporary stars of social media, with more than 78,000 people liking the picture documenting their misfortune on Instagram. Better luck with the Paris fixture, gents.
Who said you can’t win the mall?
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to own and run your own shopping centre? Well, thanks to Bloomberg, that dream can now become a retail reality. Its free-to-play American Mall game sees players take on the role of one of four characters, ranging from tech-savvy investor to retired popstar, in a quest to turn a failing mall into a jewel in the crown. The simulator starts by warning players that “decades of overbuilding and the invention of online shopping combined to leave the country with an extreme excess”. A cautionary tale for the UK, right there.
Your in-game tasks include handling tenants’ rent reduction requests, keeping your customers happy and even controlling pests. You are offered various ways to modernise your mall – food trucks in the car park or electric vehicle charging stations instead? Perhaps asset-hungry councils intent on investing in the secondary shopping centre market should see if they can make it to level 10 first. For the record, despite copious office hours spent playing – er, researching – the game, Diary has yet to make it that far.
Colliers’ stage presence
The prepared-for-anything staff at Colliers International know how to keep their powder dry – so it’s little wonder they get a name-check in the play Dry Powder (at the Hampstead Theatre until 3 March). The plot centres on a make-or-break deal for a New York-based private equity firm that has suffered some bad PR. With investors getting cold feet, it has the chance to redeem itself by saving a troubled suitcase-maker and its employees.
However, one partner at the firm (played by Marvel movie star Hayley Atwell) has another, more ruthless idea. She wants to asset-strip the business and off-shore the jobs – that’s where Colliers comes in, tasked with valuing the rental potential of the firm’s headquarters. Does the deal go through? You’ll have to see the play to find out.
Lovely bubbly
When EG reported on Strutt & Parker and BNP Paribas Real Estate finally tying the knot, we quoted an internal source wondering how a “more English than the English” firm would fit within a big French bank. Well, if you listen to (or read) EG’s interview with the merged firm’s leadership (coming to a screen near you soon), you’ll realise that the two actually have more in common than was thought. The shared commonality, perhaps unsurprisingly, is booze. When doing their due diligence the pair realised they could bond over bubbles.
And not just any bubbles. The good stuff: Tattinger. Yummy (and yes please if anyone wants to send some our way. Ahem). Anyway, it turns out that Strutts’ rural division (the more English than English bit) has been doing a bit of planting at the first UK Tattinger vineyard in Kent for Domaine Evremond – a client of BNP Paribas’ AgriFrance. What could be more French than that?
Win a flat in Bracknell? Uri welcome
Office-to-resi specialist Equinox Living has enlisted the unique talents of someone else known for transforming things: Uri Geller. He’s been called in to help with its new competition offering the chance to win a £210,000 flat at its new Abbey House development in Bracknell. It takes the form of a “game of skill” at winaflat.net – but, sadly,
no spoons are involved.
Instead, entrants are tested on their knowledge of Bracknell’s new £240m town centre, with Geller to announce the winner in a live video this summer. The spooky thing is, Diary was only just thinking about him the day before the press release landed…
