Good morning.
HSBC(£) has announced plans to ditch 40% of its 3.3m sq ft of office space over the coming years. The bank’s boss, Noel Quinn, said he was committed to keeping the Canary Wharf head office, but would shed offices(£) elsewhere in the capital, as they came up for lease renewal.
The stamp duty and business rates holidays(£) will be extended by three months, the chancellor will announce in next month’s budget.
But the government is also considering extending the ban on evictions from commercial property(£).
The extensions will last until the end of June, as the PM has said he is “very optimistic”(£) that all coronavirus restrictions would be lifted by 21 June.
British Land and Landsec led the FTSE 100’s top risers yesterday, while investors ditched lockdown winners and piled into travel and leisure stocks(£).
Meanwhile, more than 53% of private capital investment into UK real estate came from international investors in 2020, according to Knight Frank.
A tax on online retailers appears more likely than ever, but there is little agreement over how to “level the playing field”(£) amid fears that bricks and mortar retailers could end up paying more(£).
And retail sales fell again this month as the lockdown kept shoppers away from the high street, according to a CBI survey(£).
Frasers Group(£) has told investors that the six-week wait to reopen shops after lockdown will result in a £100m writedown(£) on the value of its stores.
And The FT (£) takes a look at how H&M plans to use its 5,000 stores differently.
The boss of International Hotels Group(£) has said that getting back to normal could take three years(£), as revenues halve.
Shareholders will be encouraged to punish FTSE 350 companies(£) that don’t do enough to improve diversity on their boards…
… As ministers urge firms to continue to increase the number of women(£) on boards in the wake of the Hampton-Alexander report.
The UK’s builders(£) have appealed for more support as 27% report falling workloads.
And the Bank of England‘s(£) independent directors have backed its governor, Andrew Bailey, over his part in the London Capital & Finance scandal.
Industrial veteran Ian Worboys has joined CBRE subsidiary Trammell Crow Company to launch a new logistics development arm in Europe.
A Canadian care home operator has been accused of using aggressive tax avoidance(£) to extract profits out of its UK residences.
Plans have been submitted to transform a derelict Victorian boarding school in Nottingham into high-quality purpose-built student accommodation.
In case you missed it, The Times (£) has picked up on yesterday’s story about Adam Neumann’s deal with WeWork owner Softbank and a potential SPAC attack.
Meanwhile, London should put itself at the centre of the SPAC revolution(£) to shore up its position post Brexit.
And finally, if the thought of lockdown ending has you hankering for further isolation, look no further. For a mere half a million euros you could be the proud, and fairly lonely, owner of a former lighthouse on Inis Mór(£), the largest Aran Island in Galway Bay. The Dún Eochalla lighthouse, which comes with (ruined) outbuildings and five acres, can be seen from five counties, but its nearest neighbours are uninhabited Bronze Age ring forts. There is a slight catch, though. The residential bit of the lighthouse has been a ruin for decades and it doesn’t have planning permission. Oh, and the island’s population of 840 rises a little in the summer as nearly 2m tourists pop by.
