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.
John Lewis is facing a double-whammy of bad news. First, it has had to delay the redevelopment of its Oxford Street flagship, after plans to sell a chunk of the scheme for £150m collapsed. And now it appears its West Ealing resi scheme faces “extreme challenges”, with the development expected to cost £240m but be worth just £183m.
Meanwhile, insurance broker Acrisure is the third major letting at M&G Real Estate’s 40 Leadenhall, EC3. The 900,000 sq ft office development is now 70% prelet just under a year before its completion.
Select Property has secured a £128.5m development loan to bring forward its One Port Street residential scheme in Manchester’s Northern Quarter.
A rescue deal for Wilko could be announced today after creditors, including landlords, gave the deal their blessing.
But calls to reform the broken business rates system have grown following the collapse of Wilko. Oliver Bonas boss Olly Tress said: “The government doesn’t seem to have the spine to actually do it.”
In politics, Lisa Nandy could be replaced by Angela Rayner as shadow levelling up secretary as Labour reshuffles its front bench. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer is expected to make some limited changes to his line-up later today.
Rishi Sunak is set to overturn the ban on building new onshore wind farms to fend off a rebellion from Tory MPs.
And Michael Gove has said that more taxes should be raised on landlords. We need to “find a way of extracting what we need for public services from those who operate in a rentier fashion”, he said.
Nothing is known about the ownership of more than two-thirds of UK properties held offshore, despite the new register. The ownership of more than 109,000 properties is still opaque “due to deliberate choices by government to keep the information out of scope of the legislation”.
And thousands more public buildings could face closure as ministers are urged to uncover the extent of the crumbling concrete crisis.
Abrdn’s boss has called for minimum pension contributions to double from 8% of pay to 16%, in a move that would greatly increase pension funds’ fire-power.
While new research has concluded that pension funds are paying asset managers £2bn too much in fees.
The owner of the Bill’s restaurant group has said he wants to open more restaurants, just a year after shutting 12 sites.
Several papers have obituaries and tributes for Mohammed al-Fayed, the self-made billionaire and former Harrods owner. The Times (£) asks what will happen to his £1.7bn property empire.
The Guardian, meanwhile, has the skinny on the new city being planned by a cabal of tech-bros in the farmland of northern California.
And in a bumper back-to-school podcast episode, the EG Like Sunday Morning team talks about starting out in real estate, Sir Stuart Lipton and generative AI.
And finally, as companies start to crack the whip on office attendance, it is good to see that some are still favouring the carrot over the stick. Literally, in some cases. Far from threatening staff with the sack, like Amazon and HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group is attempting to lure staff back to the office with goodies, including free food.
