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.
IPSX, the real estate-focused stock exchange that was going to revolutionise they way we invest in property, is no more. “There always seems to have been something out there that was making things really difficult,” CEO Roger Clarke tells EG. “It sounds like a real sob story, but we have hit a lot of bad luck.” A simple timeline of its five-year history would seem to suggest he is right.
Meanwhile, the platform’s mainstay, Mailbox REIT, is searching for £30m to cure a debt default caused by falling values. Mailbox chair Stephen Barter said: “While we are sad to learn that IPSX is to wind down, we have been preparing for the possibility of such an outcome.”
The world’s super-rich have poured £1.3bn into London offices. But the investment does not seem to be about good financial sense, as much as bragging rights. “Telling their billionaire mates that they’ve bought a load of BP bonds probably doesn’t look quite the same as saying that they own the company’s headquarters on St James’s,” notes Knight Frank’s Nick Braybrook.
The crumbling concrete in the UK’s schools highlights a far greater issue with maintenance of the public estate, the National Audit Office has said. While it certainly won’t be telling education secretary Gillian Keegan that she was doing “a f**king good job”, it does appear that everyone else has “sat on their arse and done nothing”.
And more than one in eight bank branches that were open at the start of the year will be closed by its end. Just over 4,000 branches will remain, with 5,600 closing since 2015.
The rescue deal for Wilko has run into to more problems, despite receiving backing from the retailer’s landlords.
And The Guardian takes a look at Hilco Capital, the restructuring specialist at the heart of the Wilko saga, as both adviser and chief creditor.
The FT’s (£) Extreme Renting series arrives in London, where soaring rents and cut-throat practices are just a way to pass on rising buy-to-let costs.
In case you missed it, Home REIT is looking to replace its entire board, starting with a search for a new SID. Time to update the CV.
And its an updated CV for Angela Rayner, who has taken over from Lisa Nandy as shadow levelling up secretary, as Sir Keir Starmer reshuffles the Labour front bench.
Further afield, ghost kitchen start-up CloudKitchens is becoming even more ghostly, shutting locations across the US.
And finally, Country Garden has soothed investor concerns about its fragile finances after striking a deal with (some of) its lenders. That’s $500m taken care of, but what about the other $13bn due this year? Or the $200bn of total debt? Whoops, there go the investors again.
