Good morning.
Fast-growing banking app Revolut(£) has raised the stakes in the working from home game, by telling its 2,000 staff that they can work from anywhere.
Businesses pushed to the brink by coronavirus are increasingly looking at homeworking, says The FT (£), potentially shelving 20% of office space.
Meanwhile, the government is consulting on prolonging social distancing(£) in offices.
Not that this has deterred Axa from raising €800m(£) to develop offices (and BTR) in Europe.
Infrastructure investor John Laing saw a bump to its share price yesterday, as it teamed up with Macquarie Bank to launch the UK’s first ever retirement rental business(£).
Builders(£) are full of the joys of spring(£) as construction activity reaches a six and a half year high.
Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group is preparing to open a 60,000 sq ft concept at a former Debenhams department store in Wolverhampton. The space will include a premium Frasers department store alongside Sports Direct, Flannels, Evans Cycles, USC and Game.
Meanwhile Debenhams(£) will reopen 97 of its stores(£) on Monday, but only for closing down sales.
Hotelier and property owner Sir Richard Lexington Sutton(£) has been stabbed to death at his country estate.
Elon Musk has lashed out at “irritating” German bureaucracy(£). Tesla is due to finish building its Berlin gigafactory in July, but still doesn’t have final planning permission.
Bollinger(£) is heading to the US to buy its first ever vineyard outside France.
An ancient city hewn from the rock will be transformed into a “valley of hospitality”(£) under Saudi plans, while the even-more ancient city of Aten has been uncovered in Egypt.
A former editor of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, who once wrote a book on monastic living, is joining the board of Berkeley Group(£).
And finally, it seems space is not the final frontier for one intrepid property millionaire. Not content with paying $55m to soar 250-miles to the International Space Station, Ohio property magnate Larry Connor(£) now plans to journey 6.8-miles under the water. When he completes his trip to the depths of the Mariana Trench, Connor will become the first person ever to visit the voids of space and the Pacific abyss in a single year. It is not known if he is scouting for development opportunities.
