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Activity in prime central London property market stable, says latest monthly report
Activity across all prime price ranges in central London are stable although sales at the top end of the market are down, according to the latest estate agent research. Overall transactions between £2 million to £5 million have increased by 11.7% this year but sales above £5 million are down by 5.5%, the latest sales and lettings report from W.A. Ellis shows. But the sector’s lettings market is buoyant with a 14% increase in tenancies starting in August compared to the same period last year. ‘If we compare the current year's activity from January to August with the same period in 2007, within our area of expertise of Chelsea, Knightsbridge, Mayfair, Belgravia and Kensington, we see a 35% diminution in activity,’ said Richard Barber, partner at the prime central London estate agency. However, he pointed out that when the inflation that the capital has enjoyed over the last four years, some 18.5% in the last year alone according to Land Registry data, a more interesting picture emerges. Property transactions between £2 million and £5 million have increased by 17.5% and those in excess of £5,000,000 have increased by 72% on 2007. ‘Whilst the media are reporting more bearish sentiments across the market and reduced levels of new buyer registration, we should not necessarily predict that the bubble is about to burst,’ said Barber. ‘Activity across all price ranges is very stable, and our research suggests that between January and August 2013 there were 1,288 transactions, and in the same period in 2014, 1,242, a reduction of only 3.5%,’ he explained. ‘Whilst the Damoclean sword of mansion tax continues to hover over the market, the figures suggest that it has not as yet impacted. Indeed, sales between £2 million and £5 million have increased by 11.7% this year. However, sales of properties over £5 million have diminished by 5.5%. ‘The reduction in activity over £5 million is perhaps indicative that the foreign investor may tolerate a tax of £15,000 per annum, based on the current ATED charges, but not the more punitive £35,000 charge per annum currently applied to properties held in company names with values in excess of £5 million,’ he added. But he pointed out that there is always a healthy appetite for the right product, and if vendors' expectations are realistic, there is no reason why we should not enjoy a normal market. Lucy Morton, senior partner and head of lettings at W.A.Ellis, said that the firm has been surprised by the level of activity over what is usually a very quiet month, with a 14% increase in tenancies starting compared to the same period last year. ‘The seasonal student market is in full swing, with students focusing on finding accommodation for the upcoming year and demand exceeding supply,’ she explained. Overseas tenants are even agreeing tenancies without seeing the property. Clients living in California were talked through the property over the phone and using Face-Time on an iPad, and went on to complete, as did two students from Norway… Continue reading
Facebook to buy WhatsApp for $19 billion in deal shocker
Facebook to buy WhatsApp for $19 billion in deal shocker (Reuters) / 20 February 2014 Facebook’s purchase of messaging service WhatsApp for up to $19 billion in cash and stock is one of the largest acquisitions ever in the technology sector. The WhatsApp and Facebook app icons on an iPhone in New York. AP Facebook Inc will buy fast-growing mobile-messaging startup WhatsApp for $19 billion in cash and stock in a landmark deal that places the world’s largest social network closer to the heart of mobile communications and may bring younger users into the fold. The transaction involves $4 billion in cash, $12 billion in stock and $3 billion in restricted stock that vests over several years. The WhatsApp deal is worth more than Facebook raised in its own IPO and underscores the social network’s determination to win the market for messaging. Facebook-WhatsApp deal one of biggest ever in tech Here are some other notable deals involving US tech companies, in order of dollar amount from largest to smallest: HEWLETT-PACKARD BUYS COMPAQ – SEPTEMBER 2001 US technology giant Hewlett-Packard buys Compaq Computer for $25 billion in a bid to compete with IBM. GOOGLE BUYS MOTOROLA MOBILITY – AUGUST 2011 Internet search giant Google buys the handset business of Motorola for $12.5 billion in a bid to challenge Apple in the smartphone market. Less than three years later, Google sold Motorola to China’s Lenovo for $2.91 billion. HEWLETT-PACKARD BUYS AUTONOMY – AUGUST 2011 US technology giant Hewlett-Packard buys British enterprise software company Autonomy for $10.24 billion. US authorities later open an investigation amid HP accusations that Autonomy had engaged in “accounting improprieties.” MICROSOFT BUYS SKYPE – MAY 2011 Microsoft buys Internet voice and video leader Skype for $8.5 billion, the largest acquisition ever by the US software giant. ORACLE BUYS SUN – APRIL 2009 US business software giant Oracle buys struggling Sun Microsystems and its Java programming language for $7.4 billion. MICROSOFT BUYS NOKIA – SEPTEMBER 2013 Microsoft buys the handset business of former market leader Nokia for $7.2 billion in an effort to catch up to rivals Apple and Google in the smartphone market. GOOGLE BUYS YOUTUBE – OCTOBER 2006 Internet search giant Google buys online video platform YouTube in October 2006 from its founders, Steve Chen and Chad Hurley, for $1.65 billion. EBAY BUYS PAYPAL – JUNE 2002 Online auction house eBay buys online payments firm PayPal for $1.5 billion. YAHOO BUYS TUMBLR – MAY 2013 Former Google executive Marissa Mayer makes her biggest purchase since taking over as CEO of Yahoo, buying the popular blogging platform Tumblr for $1.1 billion. FACEBOOK BUYS INSTAGRAM – APRIL 2012 Facebook offers $1 billion for hot smartphone photo-sharing service Instagram. The purchase of Instagram was Facebook’s largest until the WhatsApp deal. Founded by a Ukrainian immigrant who dropped out of college, Jan Koum, and a Stanford alumnus, Brian Acton, WhatsApp is a Silicon Valley startup fairy tale, rocketing to 450 million users in five years and adding another million daily. “No one in the history of the world has ever done something like this,” Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said on a conference call on Wednesday. Zuckerberg, who famously closed a $1 billion deal to buy photo-sharing service Instagram over a weekend in mid-2012, revealed on Wednesday that he proposed the tie-up over dinner with CEO Koum just 10 days earlier, on the night of February 9. WhatsApp was the leader among a wave of smartphone-based messaging apps that are now sweeping across North America, Asia and Europe. Although WhatsApp has adhered strictly to its core functionality of mimicking texting, other apps, such as Line in Japan or Tencent Holdings Ltd’s WeChat, offer games or even e-commerce on top of their popular messaging features. The deal provides Facebook entree to new users, including teens who eschew the mainstream social networks but prefer WhatsApp and rivals, which have exploded in size as private messaging takes off. “People are calling them ‘Facebook Nevers,’” said Jeremy Liew, a partner at Lightspeed and an early investor in Snapchat. How the service will pay for itself is not yet clear. Zuckerberg and Koum on the conference call did not say how the company would make money beyond a $1 annual fee, which is not charged for the first year. “The right strategy is to continue to focus on growth and product,” Zuckerberg said. Zuckerberg and Koum said that WhatsApp will continue to operate independently, and promised to continue its policy of no advertising. “Communication is the one thing that you have to use daily, and it has a strong network effect,” said Jonathan Teo, an early investor in Snapchat, another red-hot messaging company that flirted year ago with a multibillion dollar acquisition offer from Facebook. “Facebook is more about content and has not yet fully figured out communication.” Price tag Even so, many balked at the price tag. Facebook is paying $42 per user with the deal, dwarfing its own $33 per user cost of acquiring Instagram. By comparison, Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten just bought messaging service Viber for $3 per user, in a $900 million deal. Rick Summer, an analyst with Morningstar, warned that while investors may welcome the addition of such a high-growth asset, it may point to an inherent weakness in the social networking company that has seen growth slow in recent quarters. “This is a tacit admission that Facebook can’t do things that other networks are doing,” he said, pointing to the fact that Facebook had photo-sharing and messaging before it bought Instagram and WhatsApp. “They can’t replicate what other companies are doing so they go out and buy them. That’s not all together encouraging necessarily and I think deals like these won’t be the last one and that is something for investors to consider.” Venture capitalist Sequoia Capital, which invested in WhatsApp in February 2011 and led three rounds of financing altogether, holds a stake worth roughly $3 billion of the $19 billion valuation, according to people familiar with the matter. “Goodness gracious, it’s a good deal for WhatsApp,” said Teo, the early investor in Snapchat. Facebook pledged a break-up fee of $1 billion in cash and $1 billion in stock if the deal falls through. Facebook was advised by Allen & Co, while WhatsApp has enlisted Morgan Stanley for the deal. Shares in Facebook slid 2.5 percent to $66.36 after hours, from a close of $68.06 on the Nasdaq. “No matter how you look at it this is an expensive deal and a very big bet and very big bets either work out or they perform quite poorly,” Summer said. “Given the relative size, the enterprise valuations this is a very significant deal and it may not be the last one.” WhatsApp: a booming smartphone message service WhatsApp was launched five years ago as a shot at doing to text messaging what Skype did to telephone calls. If Facebook’s move to buy the startup in a cash-and-stock deal valued as high as $19 billion is any indication, the California-based WhatsApp may have hit the mark. The firm founded by former Yahoo employees Brian Acton and Jan Koum in 2009 took its name from a play on the phrase “What’s Up,” according to its website. They also devoted themselves to a credo of “No Ads. No Games. No Gimmicks.” A note stating just that and signed by Acton remains taped to Koum’s desk, according to venture capital firm Sequoia, which invested in the startup early and stands to cash in big time on the Facebook take-over. The “contrarian approach” of gathering no information about users for targeting ads was shaped by Ukraine-born Koum’s aversion to tactics of secret police in communist countries, Sequoia partner Jim Goetz said in an online note. “Jan’s childhood made him appreciate communication that was not bugged or taped,” Goetz said. “When he arrived in the US as a 16-year-old immigrant living on food stamps, he had the extra incentive of wanting to stay in touch with his family in Russia and the Ukraine.” Koum remained true to those ideas when, after working at Yahoo with his “mentor” Acton, he turned to building WhatsApp, according to Goetz. The stated mission was to build a better alternative to traditional SMS messaging in a world where smartphones were clearly becoming ubiquitous. The founders jokingly described themselves at the website as “two guys who spent combined 20 years doing geeky stuff at Yahoo! Inc.” WhatsApp is a platform for sending images, video, audio, or text messages for free over the Internet using data connections of smartphones. The application is free, but after using it for a year, there is an annual subscription fee of 99 cents. “We feel that this model will allow us to become the communications service of the 21 st century, and provide you the best way to stay in touch with your friends and family with no ads getting in the way,” the startup said in a blog post discussing pricing. WhatsApp is reported to have grown stunningly fast to more than 450 million users and said to handle 50 billion messages daily. As of the start of this year, WhatsApp had 50 employees, more than 30 of them engineers. While the company has its headquarters in the California city of Mountain View, where Google has its main campus, most of the engineering work is reportedly done in Russia. – AFP For more news from Khaleej Times, follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/khaleejtimes , and on Twitter at @khaleejtimes Continue reading
Perennial Potential: Wheatgrass Shows Promise As Biofuel, Food
Posted: 12:57 pm Fri, October 18, 2013 By Todd Nelson University of Minnesota researchers are working to domesticate a perennial grain crop known as intermediate wheatgrass that one day could appear in your car’s fuel tank, your pantry or even distinctive new craft brews. Intermediate wheatgrass, which is related to wheat, rye and barley, has the potential to be the first perennial crop to produce both biomass for energy and grain for food, according to Donald Wyse, a professor of agronomy and plant genetics in the University of Minnesota’s College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences. “It’s a species that has a wide range of possibilities,” Wyse said of intermediate wheatgrass, which also has value as forage for cattle. “To get this material out there it has to have that level of flexibility, it has to create some profit for somebody for that to happen.” As a biofuel, intermediate wheatgrass straw is a promising northern-climate alternative to switchgrass, a warm season perennial, according to a report from the U of M’s Center for Integrated Natural Resources and Agricultural Management, which Wyse co-directs. Perennial grain biofuel crops such as intermediate wheatgrass also offer significant environmental benefits, including reducing soil erosion and the release of soil carbon, Wyse said. Further, they require less energy, pesticide and fossil-fuel based fertilizer to produce than annual grain crops. Intermediate wheatgrass, however, faces the same market challenge as many other biofuel sources, Wyse said, in the form of cheap natural gas. “This plant produces a lot of biomass,” Wyse said. “As renewable fuels develop, we’re there, we’re ready to go. This plant would fit directly into that supply, but that’s not going to carry it. You know how much they want to pay for biomass — they’re not going to pay very much.” To overcome that, Wyse and other researchers are working to improve intermediate wheatgrass as a food source, concentrating on increasing both yield and seed size. A primary aim is to produce a perennial grain that will compete with annual crops such as corn, soybeans and wheat. “The grain’s going to carry the system,” Wyse said. “Because it’s competing for land you’re planting corn, soybeans and wheat on, so it has to have close to that same yield and return on investment.” Intermediate wheatgrass already has drawn interest from three food companies, including a major one based in the Twin Cities, and from five breweries, based both in Minnesota and in California, Wyse said. Food companies see potential in building product lines that incorporate intermediate wheatgrass and tout its environmental benefits, Wyse said. Specialty food marketers, meanwhile, believe they can charge a premium for intermediate wheatgrass-based products, citing the environmental positives and the potential to produce the grain organically. One hundred acres of intermediate wheatgrass have been planted at the U of M’s Rosemount Research and Outreach Center, and researchers are giving away the seed to food companies to evaluate, Wyse said. “We’re working with a company that’s interested in making a food product out of this grain that’s currently being grown at Rosemount,” Wyse said. “They’re looking at developing a product over the next year. They’re hoping to have enough grain produced from that 100 acres to do a small release of a product on a really limited basis next year.” Craft brewers already have tested intermediate wheatgrass in new brews, Wyse said. “These small breweries that are developing around the country, they’re looking for uniqueness,” Wyse said. “We’re hearing back from brewers that it produces a nice flavor in the beer that their customers really like. They’re really excited about it.” The intermediate wheatgrass development project received a $695,000 grant in 2011 from the U of M’s Initiative for Renewable Energy and the Environment. Food companies are handling product development costs, Wyse said, adding that he expected at least one to invest in the work. He estimated that the effort would need $250,000 a year over the next five years to continue genetic and environmental research on the plant, although he emphasized that today’s lines are ready for commercial use. “We need another five to six years to put the best product out there in the landscape and into the marketplace but the materials now are adequate for consideration in the food system and they’re more than ideal for producing the (environmental benefits) we would expect,” Wyse said. “And obviously, the biomass could also be used as the technology develops.” Collaborating in the research is the plant breeder Lee DeHaan of the Land Institute, a Kansas-based nonprofit, who has been studying intermediate wheatgrass for a decade and was a graduate student of Wyse. DeHaan said he is focusing on developing intermediate wheatgrass plants that produce larger seeds and higher seed yield, which would improve its harvestability and boost potential biofuel use. “If we can get the system to yield a maximal amount of grain, then the biomass will become relatively affordable, because then it’s just a byproduct of the grain production system and only has to cover the cost of harvesting it to make a profit,” Wyse said. “We need to get the grain part working, then the biomass part can follow, whether it’s converted to a liquid fuel, burned or put into a cow.” Read more: http://finance-comme…/#ixzz2iLqGcGkh Continue reading
