Interactive football games venue TOCA Social heading to former Debenhams space at Westfield London
A chunk of the vacant Debenhams space at Westfield London has been signed for, and will become home to an interactive football games and entertainment venue.
TOCA Social- whose owner counts sports stars Harry Kane and Leah Williamson as backers- will start converting 35,000 square feet at Europe’s largest mall next year. It plans to welcome customers to 25 playing boxes and two bars also serving food, the Evening Standard can reveal.
A division of US company TOCA Footfall, this opening will mark the Social brand’s third UK site. It follows success at its Greenwich branch at The O2 where it has attracted over 300,000 visitors in the past year alone.
There was also a strong performance during the Women’s World Cup 2023.
NS&I launches new issues of savings products with rates of more than 6%
Savings giant NS&I has launched new issues of its one-year Guaranteed Growth Bonds and Guaranteed Income Bonds, paying the highest rates since they first went on sale in 2008.
Available from Wednesday, the new issues offer savers 6.20% AER (annual equivalent rate) for both one-year fixed-rate Guaranteed Growth Bonds and one-year Guaranteed Income Bonds.
Previously, one-year Guaranteed Growth Bonds paid 5.00% AER and one-year Guaranteed Income Bonds paid 5.12% AER.
NS&I is backed by the Treasury, so money held in it has 100% security.
Record number of firms sign up to sustainably invest UK savers’ money
A record number of companies have pledged to sustainably invest money on behalf of UK savers and pensioners.
The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) announced on Wednesday that more firms than ever before are signed up to its UK Stewardship Code 2020.
The code sets high standards for those investing money on behalf of UK savers and pensioners to create long-term value and lead to sustainable benefits for the economy, environment and society.
Market snapshot as much of FTSE’s gains erased
The FSTE 100 slipped back in the late morning, but is still up for the day so far.
Take a look at our latest market snapshot.
Lego earnings plunge 19% in tougher toy market
Toy giant Lego has seen half-year earnings tumble by nearly a fifth as the boom in demand seen during the pandemic faded.
The Danish group reported a 19% fall in operating profits to 6.4 billion Danish krona (£738 million) in the six months to June 30.
Lego saw sales growth slow to 1%, with revenues of 27.4 billion Danish Krona (£3.2 billion) as it came up against “exceptional” trading a year earlier, with demand having soared during Covid-19 restrictions.
Revenues were flat with currency movements stripped out.
Direct Line shares lifted by CEO hire, FTSE 100 steady
Churchill owner Direct Line Insurance got the City’s nod of approval today after it said it had hired a boss from rival Aviva to drive its turnaround.
Adam Winslow will step into the chief executive’s role vacated by Penny James, who left in January after a profit warning caused by a surge in motor insurance claims.
Direct Line shares are down by a quarter this year but rallied 3.45p to 164.2p on the appointment of Winslow to the £820,000-a-year role. He starts early next year.
Analysts at Jefferies noted that Aviva’s UK general insurance arm, which Winslow has run since May 2021, showed “remarkable resilience” in a challenging 2022 for the industry.
Direct Line, which also owns the Green Flag roadside recovery service, was among today’s best performing stocks in another robust session for the FTSE 250 index.
London’s mid-cap benchmark rose by 62 points to 18,530.59, while the FTSE 100 index built on yesterday’s 1.7% jump with a gain of 15.99 points to 7480.98 as traders bet that US interest rates are at their peak.
Persimmon and Taylor Wimpey shares spent another session on the risers board after yesterday’s loosening of EU pollution rules, but B&Q owner Kingfisher fell 3.2p to 233.4p as JPMorgan cut its price target to 220p.
City Comment
This week Goldman Sachs retreated somewhat from its plan to sell financial products to the man in the street.
It is selling a personal financial management division in the US as CEO David Solomon seeks to unwind what the FT called a “a botched foray into consumer banking”.
This feels like one of the most predictable stories in finance, albeit one years in the making.
Goldman’s move to lure ordinary folk looked like a bank running out of ideas; one that had forgotten what it is good at.
What it is good at is very high-level trading and investment banking advice for gigantic corporations. Deal making and scheming at the very top of society.
Ordinary banking of the high street sort is about collecting pennies here and there and turning off the lights before you go home.
High charging investment banking is about charging tens of millions and working all night, about making things happen even when nothing much seem to be.
Moreover, you do business with Goldman Sachs partly out of snob appeal. It becoming available to almost anyone was always going to dent that brand value. (There are bound to be Coutts clients still upset to discover they shared a bank with Nigel Farage.)
Goldman says it is now focussed on “ultra-high net worth” wealth management – us rubes can forget it.
There’s something reassuring about that. Goldman on the high street, next to Greggs and WH Smith, never looked like a runner in the first place.
Solomon, the part-time DJ who is under some pressure from investors, is getting back to basics.
His 600,000 Spotify fans might have to wait for fresh material while Goldman goes back to being Goldman.
Mortgage approvals fall, but not dramatically
Mortgage approvals fell in July, but are still far from falling off a cliff, with the Bank of England revealing that 49,500 loans were approved in July.
The number of approvals is down by 5,200 on June and below the average figures for most of the last decade, but is still up from the spring.
Meanwhile, the the actual interest paid on newly drawn mortgages saw ticked up to 4.66% in July, while the rate on the outstanding stock of mortgages rose from 2.92% to 2.97%. However, the increases are modest considering the rapid rise in the Bank rate in recent months.
Pru shares lift on Chinese hope
New Prudential chief Anil Wadhani plans to double down on expansion in Asia and Africa while recognising a long list of risks from that plan.
Profits rose 3.6% to $1.46 billion in the last six months thanks to Chinese investors buying insurance deals in Hong Kong.
It warned investors today of a list of “risk factors” that include rising interest rates and the weakness of the Chinese economy. The shift to a low carbon future could also hit asset valuations.
That aside, Wadhani wants to boost dividends to investors by prioritising investment in Asia and Africa after more or less shedding the US and European arms.
The CEO, appointed in February, said it is “highly optimistic of the medium to long term growth potential” of China, despite recent concerns about its economic heatlh.
Pru shares in London rose 37p to 1021p, which leaves the business valued at £28 billion.
Superdry shares suspended after audit delays
Shares in Superdry were suspended this morning, as the fashion brand failed to publish audited results in time.
The business was required to publish audited results by yesterday, but said that “normal procedures” in its audit were taking longer than expected.
It expects trading to resume before the end of the week.
Shares were trading at 56.1p, down almost 60% for the year, before the suspension.
