Good morning.
Tomorrow a new stock will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Trading under the ticker “WE” – Adam Neumann would be proud – WeWork(£) will begin its reincarnation as a publicly listed company, after its successful SPAC merger(£) yesterday.
Taxes will rise(£) and services will be be cut(£) to pay for Britain’s transition to net zero, after the Treasury ruled out(£) additional borrowing. This is despite the prime minister pledging that the UK can meet the targets “without so much as a hair shirt in sight”. Perhaps he meant there were no hair shirts in sight at last night’s billionaire’s banquet?
Meanwhile, the government is exploring the idea of green mortgages, and three out of four smaller firms still have no strategies in place(£) to cut emissions.
A damning internal review into the Marble Arch Mound has accused its managers of incompetence and deliberately trying to hide rising costs.
Tenant experience giant HqO has acquired Office App in a deal that will create one of the biggest proptech companies in the world, valued at more than $500m (£300m).
General Projects is launching General People, a flexible office operator focused on outer London. It will start with 117,000 sq ft in Royal Docks, E16.
More than 100 estate agents are preparing to take legal action against online agent Purplebricks(£). The total claim could be worth £100m.
Morrisons’ shareholders(£) have approved Clayton Dubilier & Rice’s £7bn takeover of the 122-year-old grocer.
London, Manchester and Edinburgh have all ranked in the top 15 in a new European cities index for real estate investment. The lowest ranking UK city is Hull, in 108th place, but Swiss Life notes “high potential” for improvement.
Evergrande will officially default on its debts if it fails to make an $83.5m payment by Saturday night. Chinese developer Sinec has also missed a payment(£) on $246m of bonds as the crisis in the country’s real estate sector grows. Evergrande’s continued suspension from trading has pushed the value of frozen stocks(£) on the Hong Kong exchange to a record $61bn.
In the UK, Big Yellow and Safestore were the top real estate risers on the London Stock Exchange yesterday.
Meanwhile, open storage – land to let or storage yards – may still be seen as “grubby”, but it is set to become the next hot asset class, says Carter Jonas.
And finally, open storage space may be the next hot thing, but don’t set up camp on it. Travellers and trespassers(£) who damage property, leave piles of rubbish, cause noise or even smells will face up to three months in prison under a government crackdown to be announced today. Meanwhile, with no sense of irony, the Daily Mail has an article today praising “tiny homes”, which it heralds as “the next big thing”. The “posh playhouses for grown-ups” are, it says, a low-cost and eco-friendly alternative to mainstream housing. The best thing though, the Mail gushes, is that some of them can even be moved from place to place to avoid planning or even paying for land. Yep. Those ones are known as caravans.
