Good morning. A coffee a day helps you…well, it just helps you.
Prologis has appointed DTRE to market a portfolio of warehouses in what could be the biggest sheds sale in UK history(£). The £435m portfolio comprises 22 warehouses.
Dominic Cummings has vowed to take an axe to the planning system(£). He made the pledge in a conference call to other government advisers that somehow found its way to the ears of The Times.
Meanwhile, the person supposedly in charge of such things – housing secretary Robert Jenrick – has extended 400 planning permissions for people who hadn’t even sat next to him at dinner. The permissions for 24,000 homes were due to expire this year, but have been given the extension due to the lockdown.
The Times is unusually quiet about the housing secretary today. Except for this(£), of course.
Perhaps Jenrick could swoop to the rescue of the Swansea tidal lagoon(£)? Planning for the £1.3bn project will expire by the end of the month, unless works begin. And the the only thing holding up the works is a permission slip from the government…
… Perhaps the scheme could be funded instead of the £1.6bn A303 Stonehenge tunnel? That’s what the archaeologists want anyway, after finding even more neolithic remains.
The Trump administration(£) has weighed in against Huawei’s £400m R&D facility in Cambridgeshire’s ‘silicon fen’.
Berkeley Group and Barratt Developments were among the top risers on the FTSE 100(£), while Intu shares dropped to a month-low as the deadlines nears to reach a deal with its lenders.
Two of Britain’s biggest accountancy firms face investigation over their role in the London Capital & Finance minibond scandal(£).
The first full week of trading since lockdown has seen a “soft rebound” in the number of shoppers.
But manufacturing is still in the doldrums, as the CBI reports the poorest output since records began(£) in 1975. So, yes, that includes the Winter of Discontent.
Brookhouse has signed a partnership with electric vehicle charging provider Engenie. The scheme is thought to be the largest of its kind in the UK.
Former London Stock Exchange boss Nikhil Rathi(£) will be the next head of the Financial Conduct Authority(£).
The rise of the BTR sector means that rent is no longer a dirty word, writes EG’s Damian Wild.
And finally, plans to revive a Wild West ghost town have gone up in smoke. Literally. A posse led by hospitality prospector Brent Underwood paid $1.4m for the former mining town of Cerro Gordo(£), some 200 miles north of Los Angeles, in 2018. The Underwood Gang planned to lure tourists to the refurbished, and supposedly haunted, old hotel for fine food and sipping whiskey. Unfortunately, other forces had different plans. Underwood told the Los Angeles Times that a “shadowy apparition” had been spotted in the kitchen on 14 June. By 3am the next day, Cerro Gordo was in flames. With no running water there was nothing he could do to save the town.
