Good morning. Here is your AM bulletin, with the latest news and views from EG, as well as a few of the best bits from the morning papers.
Brookfield has called off the sale of Center Parcs after failing to find a buyer willing to pay its £4bn-plus asking price.
Simten’s One Museum Street, WC1, has been approved by Camden Council. The 19-storey tower will transform the Bloomsbury plot to the north of the British Museum.
Capital & Centric has submitted detailed plans to transform the former Littlewoods Building in Liverpool into a £70m TV and film campus.
And with a new HQ in the Heart of the City (of Sheffield, that is), Henry Boot is proclaiming the start of a new era. Or is it – almost – coming full circle?
Hotel Chocolat will continue its expansion plans after it is bought by Mars in a £534m deal. As well as 124 shops in the UK, the company has a 140-acre cacao farm in St Lucia and also runs a boutique hotel on the Caribbean island.
And Marston’s, the 1,415 pub estate, has replaced its CEO Andrew Andrea with Merlin Entertainment’s Justin Platt.
In other news, the chancellor is mulling plans to cut business taxes in his Autumn Statement next week. Other proposals include halving the rate of inheritance tax and cuts to stamp duty. But businesses say more needs to be done to boost investment.
Civil servants will be ordered back to the office for at least three days a week in the first official Whitehall guidance on working from home.
Torsion Group has sold a 50% stake in Phoenix, its £90m built-to-rent scheme in Leeds, to Oliver Cookson’s family office.
And Kadans Science Partner and the University of Glasgow have kick-started development on their health innovation hub in Govan, Glasgow.
But crumbling hospitals will probably close before replacements are ready, MPs have said in a highly critical report.
