May 6, 2018

Here East: home for the internet industrialists

30 July 2016 – by Janie Manzoori-Stamford Built to house more than 20,000 journalists covering the 2012 Olympic Games in Stratford, E20, Here East, as the Olympic Press and Broadcast Centre is now known, has set its sights on becoming a hub for the next generation of tech occupiers: the

Read More »

Kuczynski seeks consensus in divided Peru

©Reuters Supporters of Pedro Pablo Kuczynski celebrate in Lima after the economist won the race to become Peru’s new president More On this topic IN Americas Politics & Policy Just hours after beating Keiko Fujimori to win Peru’s most closely fought presidential contest in more than 50 years, Pedro Pablo

Read More »
Latest Issue
Issue 324 : Jan 2025

May 6, 2018

Residential property market in Abu Dhabi slow in first quarter of 2016

In Abu Dhabi real there was a slight decrease in demand for higher priced residential units but sales activity was slow although relatively stable except for a handful of transactions concluding at below market rates. A fee of 3% on home rentals was announced as a Municipality Contract Fee, which will be applied to all Abu Dhabi’s expat residents and this could affect the market, according to the latest UAE property review from Asteco. Rental rates for prime and high quality residential apartments fell 2% compared to the fourth quarter of 2015, the report data shows. However, apartment rental rates remained, on average, 4% higher than the previous year’s rates. Mid and low quality units, in contrast, recorded stable rates with only a slight decrease for larger units, as tenants moved to newer developments offering similar or lower rental rates. Similar to the apartment sector, rental rates in the villa market were relatively stable in the first three months of 2016. However, there was a slight decrease in demand for the higher priced but older villas that are predominantly located on Abu Dhabi Island. In comparison, the majority of newer prime and high end villa developments, which include the Saadiyat Island projects, Golf Gardens, and Al Raha Beach, recorded their highest rental rates. The report suggests that a lack of quality villa communities continued to be the main factor behind the high rental rates throughout Abu Dhabi. Over the last 12 months, the prime and high quality villa projects recorded between 4% and 7% rental increases, while those for lower quality private villas decreased by more than 10% over the same period. A breakdown of the figures show that price movement varied with rates down by 5% to 7 % over the quarter in Reem Island communities whereas Saadiyat Island and Al Raha Beach recorded growth of 2% and up to 6% respectively and the report suggest this is due to the relative small availability of stock actually for sale in the market. The amount of upcoming supply on Reem Island, together with sales rates peaking in 2015, resulted in a large decrease in demand from buyers in the first quarter of 2016. Sales prices on Reem Island recorded an overall downward trend for the first three months of the year with rates for City of Lights dropping by approximately 10%, Sun and Sky Towers and The Gate Towers decreasing by 5% and 6% respectively, and Marina Square prices falling by 6%. The traded price at Marina Square in Q1 2016 ranged between AED 1,230 to AED 1,350 per square foot. The report also shows that after a period of strong demand for villas throughout 2015, the first three months of 2016 recorded limited sales activity. In particular, the more affordable units in the Al Raha Gardens and Al Reef developments saw only a few transactions taking place, of which most were below market rates. In comparison new developments on Yas Island were able to attract some demand since Aldar launched several new residential projects such as West Yas and Yas areas, which offered four and five bedroom villas for sale from around AED 4.7 million. BOOKMARK THIS PAGE (What is this?)      Source link

Read More »

Here East: home for the internet industrialists

30 July 2016 – by Janie Manzoori-Stamford Built to house more than 20,000 journalists covering the 2012 Olympic Games in Stratford, E20, Here East, as the Olympic Press and Broadcast Centre is now known, has set its sights on becoming a hub for the next generation of tech occupiers: the internet industrialists. Some 18 months from completion, the Delancey-led redevelopment of the Press and Broadcast Centre is 55% let by floorspace and Gavin Poole – the man behind the ambitious plan to steal some tech thunder from the EC1 homeland – is feeling confident. “This is so unique that we’re not really worried about competition, to be honest,” says the Here East chief executive. “That’s not an arrogant point of view. We’re on the Olympic Park. It’s a unique destination, a unique development, a unique vision.” He’s not wrong. While Here East may not be the only London development targeting the growing tech sector, it is by far the biggest. At 1.2m sq ft – the equivalent of almost 90 Olympic-sized swimming pools – Here East has the capacity to support more than 5,500 jobs and to pump more than £340m into the local economy. It has already secured data centre operator Infinity SDC as a tenant. Broadcaster BT Sport is there already, while visual arts organisation SPACE Studios and dance studio Wayne McGregor have also committed to taking space in the campus. Poole has ambitions to make Here East the centre of the tech universe not for the coders, but for the makers, for the internet industrialists manufacturing the products and services of the future. He sees Here East as a place where “serious” products – broadcast content, robotics, wearable technology and software – can be developed. Central to this ambition is collaboration, says Poole, who this week announced that a new Technology Innovation Centre is to be developed at the project. The TIC, a jv between Delancey fund DV4 and ENTIQ, the team behind Canary Wharf fintech accelerator Level39, will occupy 68,000 sq ft on the ground floor of the former Olympic Press Centre. At full capacity the TIC will support as many as 500 on-site members and organisations that will have access to accelerator and incubation programmes, prototyping facilities and a state-of-the-art technology lab, designed to support new product development, business growth and collaboration. Prior to the Here East offer, internet industrialists often took space in whatever properties they could get their hands on, space that was often at the end of its use and ready to be redeveloped, Poole says. “Those sorts of spaces were great for those businesses when they were start-ups, but a lot of companies talking to us say it is time to get serious and find a proper, permanent home,” he says. All the content from this weekís magazine, including this article, is available in the new app. Laurence Kemball-Cook, founder of Pavegen, a floor tile that uses kinetic energy from footfall to generate off-grid electricity and store and analyse data, agrees. “I started my company six years ago out of my bedroom, which is where I spent another three years working on it,” says Kemball-Cook. “When we went to a collaboration incubator, it was pivotal to our growth. Innovation is not a linear process. You’ve got to be like a sponge and work with as many people as you can.” For Poole, the best way to ensure a strong sense of collaboration is careful curation of tenant mix, which he says he not only has the luxury of doing but believes is critical to the development’s success. “We’ve had people wanting to take the entire building and we said no because it skews the vision,” he says. “We threw out quite a wide net when it came to our preferred tenants and that is where the innovation is, that idea of sharing. “If someone pitched up and said they wanted to stick all their back-office accounting here, it wouldn’t work. We’ve been in that situation before and said no.” It all sounds very attractive. Collaborative space, high-quality occupiers and a high-speed digital infrastructure left behind by London 2012. But it is in Stratford and, arguably, on the wrong side of the Olympic Park. If a tech occupier wants to be close to the hedge funds and investors of Mayfair, W1, Stratford can seem a long way away. Digital connections might be almost instantaneous, but activating a face-to-face meeting could be more problematic – it takes at least 20 minutes to get to Bond Street. The fastest route into central London begins at Stratford International, which delivers passengers to St Pancras, N1, in less than 10 minutes. But the station and Here East are on almost opposite sides of the 568-acre park and while the distance between the two is equal to the distance from Liverpool Street, EC2, to Shoreditch High Street, E1, the exposed parkland between makes it feel further. It is an obstacle that is being dealt with. BT Sport has introduced a minibus for its staff and Here East will launch a formal corporate bus service in September, which will shuttle workers between Here East, Stratford International and Westfield from 7am until 10.30pm, stopping for pick-ups every four to seven minutes. “There’s no denying that some people just won’t consider it [as a location],” says Matthew Glenny, senior surveyor at JLL. “But Here East will almost certainly suit native east London tenants, people who are already based in the area. And the great thing about it is that it should be reasonably priced.” Poole says rents will be “competitive” but refuses to commit to numbers. Glenny adds: “It also sits in an area that’s very popular with millennials. When you’ve got a younger business with people under the age of 30 living in London, a lot of them will be

Read More »

Portland Cement Market Expanding at 5.1% CAGR from 2014 to 2020 owing to Growing Urbanization.

Category: Construction Industry Today | Subscribe to Construction Industry Today Feed Published Fri, Apr 8th 2016 The portland cement market demand in 2013 was worth 3,670.8 million tons and is expected to reach 5,165.1 million tons by 2020, growing at a CAGR of 5.1% between 2014 and 2020. Posted via Industry Today. Follow us on Twitter @IndustryToday Transparency Market Research has released a new market report on the Portland cement market, titled “Portland Cement Market – Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2014 – 2020.” The report states that the global Portland cement market, which totaled over 3.6 bn tons in 2013, is expected to amount to 5.2 bn tons by 2020, expanding at a CAGR of 5.1% from 2014 to 2020. The study analyzes the product value chain and evaluates the market based on Porter’s five forces model, analyzing the degree of competition in the market.  Portland cement is crucial for construction applications such as the construction of commercial or residential structures. Growing urbanization in Asia Pacific has led to a rise in demand for housing and other infrastructure development. This, in turn, leads to a rise in the demand for Portland cement in the region. Since nations such as India and China are expected to require basic infrastructure facilities to be built, these countries are anticipated to be the major segments of the Asia Pacific regional market propelling the Portland cement market in the future. Moreover, the Rio Summer Olympic Games in 2016 and the FIFA World Cup in Russia in 2018 will require world-class infrastructure developments for the stadiums and other auxiliary amenities. The Russian government has allocated US$16 bn for the development of essential infrastructure for the FIFA World Cup. This is expected to drive the demand for Portland cement in Russia and Brazil. One of the major factors limiting the growth of the Portland cement market is the environmental regulations put forth by several governments. Cement production is an energy-intensive process, which can cause many regions to impose various regulations regarding emissions from the cement industry. Geographically, the Portland cement market is segmented into Asia Pacific, North America, Europe, and Rest of the World. Out of these regions, 60% of the global market was held by Asia Pacific in 2013 in terms of total consumption. North America and Europe followed next as the major consumers of Portland cement. View exclusive Sample of this report: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=1891 Based on application, the market is categorized into residential, commercial, infrastructure, and others. In 2013, the residential and infrastructure segments collectively accounted for over 70% of the global Portland cement market. Commercial construction applications were the third largest segment of the market. Some of the key market participants providing high-quality Portland cement are:  Holcim, Lafarge SA, Heidelberg Cement, Anhui Conch, CNBM, UltraTech Cement Ltd., and Italcementi. The report profiles these leading players and thus provides interested individuals and enterprises a competitive edge above the rest. Growth strategies implemented by the leading manufacturers of Portland cement as well as other critical data such as product price, pictures, and specifications of each company have been included. This fruitful information assists readers in making wise and informed decisions regarding investment in the Portland cement market. The global Portland cement market is segmented as follows: Application Residential Commercial Infrastructure Others (Including cement bricks, farm construction, etc.) Regional North America Europe Asia Pacific Rest of the World (RoW) Contact information Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. Source link

Read More »

Kuczynski seeks consensus in divided Peru

©Reuters Supporters of Pedro Pablo Kuczynski celebrate in Lima after the economist won the race to become Peru’s new president More On this topic IN Americas Politics & Policy Just hours after beating Keiko Fujimori to win Peru’s most closely fought presidential contest in more than 50 years, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski is back at home taking congratulatory calls from Colombia’s Juan Manuel Santos and Mauricio Macri of Argentina. With his party holding just 18 seats in the 130-member congress compared with 73 for Ms Fujimori, daughter of a jailed former president, Peru’s new leader needs all the support he can get. “It feels good [to win] but I have to sort out a few problems,” the former World Bank economist told the Financial Times from the office of his elegant home, surrounded by paintings from the Andean Cusco school. “The first is to get some sort of agreement, both with the left and with the Fujimoristas, so I can get a basic legislative programme going. We have a very clear idea of what it should be but we need to get a consensus.” That will be easier said than done. The legacy of Alberto Fujimori, president for a decade in the 1990s, continues to divide Peru, even as the former president serves a 25-year prison sentence for corruption and crimes against humanity. Whether Ms Fujimori shared the autocratic tendencies of her father — who once deployed soldiers and tanks to shut down congress — was the dominant issue in the election. Mr Kuczynski won by fewer than 50,000 ballots in a country of 18m voters. But most agree the real story was that his rival was defeated after a surge in the anti-Fujimori vote. At the time of interview, Ms Fujimori had yet to call Mr Kuczynski to congratulate him. Still, in a move that could appeal to disgruntled Fujimoristas, Mr Kuczynski hints at a possible compromise over the 77-year old former president. “If Congress passes a law — not just for him — that says people of a certain age with certain sentences can complete their sentences at home, I will sign it,” he said. Before that, there is the need to press ahead with economic reforms and a push to create what his team calls “popular capitalism”. “The key thing now is to get a consensus around a very basic programme: small and medium enterprises, tax simplification, some tax reductions . . . and improve water access, health and education,” says the 77-year old Oxford and Princeton-educated polyglot, gently banging a copy of the FT on his desk. His programme will be financed, he says, in part by raising debt: “I’m not saying we borrow all the way to paradise [but] I have enough of a reputation to let go the brake a little.” The son of a Polish-German doctor who came to South America to work in a leper colony, and the cousin of film-maker Jean-Luc Godard, Mr Kuczynski was just 22 years old when he was hired by the World Bank. He has worked on Wall Street and in the African mining industry, as an official at the IMF and in Peru’s central bank, and served terms as his country’s prime minister, mining and finance ministers. “I’m an investment banker, I’ve done very complicated projects,” he said. With low mineral prices weighing on Peru’s copper-dependent economy, Mr Kuczynski is confident he can entice leading miners such as Rio Tinto and Anglo American, which already operate in Peru, to invest further. “You have to talk to their boards and convince them they can actually make some money here,” he said. He also hopes to increase bank lending and boost investment in infrastructure. Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in the office of his home Another goal is to almost double the number of workers in the formal economy. Alfredo Thorne, the banker who will be his finance minister, said formalising 50 per cent of the labour force would add 2 percentage points of growth to a country that is forecast by the IMF to grow 3.7 per cent this year and 4.1 per cent in 2017. Mr Kuczynski is aiming to lift that to 5 per cent by 2018. You need JavaScript active on your browser in order to see this video. On foreign policy the new president insists he will take a tough line on democratic abuses in socialist Venezuela, which is mired in political and economic crisis. “We have to take a very hard stance on Venezuela — we have to shun them,” he said. “Things have changed in Latin America,” added the president, who by replacing leftwinger Ollanta Humala extends the region’s shift to the centre-right. “We are moving to more market-oriented and more democratic economies. But a market-oriented economy will fail in Peru if you don’t give people water, education and basic things.” To the critics who have said that just a few years shy of his 80th birthday he is too old for the job, Mr Kuczynski insists he has plenty of energy left. “All my aunts lived till they were 98,” he said. “I still have another 21 years.” Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2016. You may share using our article tools. Please don’t cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web. Source link

Read More »