Good morning.
High Street Group will face fresh questions about its future after a second auditor resigned. Manchester-based Haines Watts said it was quitting “due to increased credit risk following non-payment of previously agreed fees”.
The way that London-listed companies tap shareholders for cash(£) is set to be overhauled(£) by the government.
But in a lacklustre day on the markets Custodian REIT was the top real estate riser, with Workspace Group and Hammerson also making gains.
Meanwhile, the pandemic stimulus(£) has left the global economy vulnerable to another financial crisis(£). The IMF warns that valuations of some assets have become “overly stretched”, with the UK(£) particularly at risk(£).
In China, president Xi Jinping is said to be pushing ahead with reforms to the property market, even if it leads to the collapse of developers such as Evergrande. The likely outcome, according to one official? “Nationalise the whole real estate sector.”
CGI Merchant Group(£) is poised to buy the lease for Donald Trump’s Washington DC hotel for more than $370m.
The Christmas and Boxing Day shopping rushes are expected to be quieter(£) this year because of supply chain issues.
Hundreds of churches could be sold(£) by the Church of England in the next five years.
Meanwhile, a former boot factory in Leicester’s cultural quarter will go under the hammer in SDL Property Auctions’ next national sale.
Residential tenants are returning to city centres, pushing up rents(£) in Bristol, Nottingham and Glasgow more than 10% higher than pre-pandemic levels.
And finally, a 10% hike is nothing compared with the rents being demanded by some Airbnb owners during Glasgow’s COP26 conference(£). £103,000 for 12 nights? For a two-bedroom flat? There had better be a hot-tub. Meanwhile, it seems foreign secretary Liz Truss will have to share the grace-and-favour Chevening Estate(£) with her predecessor Dominic Raab after all. And that’s despite attempts to stake her claim with an Instagram picture of a room full of guns. And despite precedent, in the form of Geoffrey Howe(£), that former foreign secretaries don’t get to keep the 3,500-acre bonus even if they are handed deputy PM as a consolation prize. But perhaps Howe was exactly the precedent the PM had in mind when he allowed Raab to stay in situ. After all, a year after being evicted from Chevening, Howe made a little speech in the Commons…
