Good morning. It’s time to carb-up for a marathon of morning property news.
Countrywide and LSL are in talks for a $460m merger(£) to create the UK’s biggest estate agency group. Its all-share, though, so at least Countrywide won’t be left wondering where the money is…
Hammerson is preparing investors for the news on Tuesday that their dividend will be cut by 30%(£). Values are also expected to be written down by more than 20%.
And Daejan Holdings has decided that having women on the board is a private matter, as the Freshwater family buys out all other shareholders(£).
Blackstone has set up a 10-person team(£) in London to funnel billions into UK infrastructure.
A coalition of landlords, owners and management companies is calling for the government to create a multibillion-pound fund for the 550,000 people with ‘Grenfell-style’ cladding(£).
Meanwhile Britain’s prisons could become full(£) by the end of the year.
And more than 11,000 new homes are due to be built on floodplains, as the PM continues to refuse to visit flooded areas(£). Of course, all that will change… A Dutch expert is predicting a rise by up to 6½ feet(£), which means that if Downing Street won’t go to the water, the water will come to Downing Street!
Every once in a while one political party or other touts the idea of a land value tax. But this time it is the Conservatives! The Chancellor is apparently keen on LVT to replace business rates(£). Don’t expect it in this budget, though…
…What is to be expected is a raft of measures to tame housebuilders. Expect changes to HTB and a possible tax on landbanks(£). Or, at least, some very strongly worded announcements about scoping committees and the like…
Meininger Hotels is moving closer to a £330m float(£).
MFG, which operates 900 petrol forecourts, is courting £3bn-plus suitors for its business(£).
And the Restaurant Group is expected to announce its first wave of closures this week(£), as it seeks to halve its 352 venue estate.
And finally, anyone out there fancy a change of career, and possibly relocation to Scandinavia? Norway’s central bank has posted a discreet advert for someone to step in as the head of Norges Bank Investment Management(£). So far, so dull. Except that this is the other name for Norway’s $1.2tn sovereign wealth fund – the largest in the world. And someone with a property background could be exactly what they are looking for. The fund owns the equivalent of 1.4% of every listed company in the world, with just 3% of its holdings in property. As that equates to $36bn, it isn’t exactly small beer. But it seems property is going to be more important, partly due to concerns about over-exposure to the stock market and partly because it needs to find more socially-responsible investments. Time for someone to turn the tanker around? I mean, it would be fun, right?
