Despite expectations that London offices will be less busy once Covid-19 is over, investors are ready to pour as much as £45bn into that market. What is going on? on.ft.com/3ooTun6
Property executives, investors and analysts believe that Covid-19 will push up demand for flexible, open-air facilities with high rents whereas other spaces will become obsolete ft.com/content/d6b8d4…
So far they seem to be right: the average rent agreed on new leases for high-quality offices in the City was £83 per square foot in the first three months of 2021, up from £75 in the previous period ft.com/content/d6b8d4…
Elsewhere in the market, rents are dropping and office space is running empty. At the end of March, 8.9% of offices in London were vacant, hurting small independent landlords the most ft.com/content/d6b8d4…
Prices in the high-end market, on the other hand, are likely to get an extra boost from investors’ new environmental commitments. Many of the world’s largest property owners are funding projects to reduce the energy associated with running an office ft.com/content/d6b8d4…
This, in turn, could leave owners of buildings with poor climate records behind, contributing to a growing wealth gap in the office property market in London. Read more 👇 ft.com/content/d6b8d4…
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
The global population of billionaires has risen more than fivefold in the past 20 years, with the largest fortunes rocketing past $100bn.
And economic stimulus driven by the pandemic has made the wealthiest even wealthier. What’s the story? on.ft.com/3eS59Yv
As Covid-19 worsened during 2020, central banks injected $9tn into economies worldwide. Much of that went into financial markets – and from there into the net worth of the ultra-rich.
Globally, billionaires’ total wealth rose by $5tn to $13tn that year on.ft.com/3eS59Yv
Ruchir Sharma, chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, has been tracking the wealth of the world’s billionaires, identifying not only how it is generated but which nations could be most at risk from anti-wealth revolts on.ft.com/3eS59Yv
Thousands of people, possibly millions, have vanished from memory in North Korea – but there’s a group of activists, lawyers and cyber experts in Seoul who are building a digital database to locate them and, one day, hold someone accountable ft.com/content/c93451…
Talking to the FT, Lee Han-byeol recalls her favourite memory of her brother, who was apprehended trying to flee North Korea – the last certain sighting of him. ‘He really adored me. I hope I can see his face again.’ ft.com/content/c93451…
North Korea’s mass disappearances date back to the country's beginnings. During the months-long occupation by the north in 1950, 90,000 South Koreans are estimated to have been abducted – some for slave labour, others for their specialist skills ft.com/content/c93451…
Russia will withdraw from the International Space Station (ISS) in 2025 as Moscow seeks to build its own and turns to China for co-operation on.ft.com/3dzPLj4
Russia’s decision to leave the ISS would sever one of the most prominent and long-lasting areas of collaboration between Moscow and Washington ft.com/content/a15185…
The US and Russia jointly launched the ISS in 1998 in what was seen as a major step to rebuild ties between the cold war adversaries that had spent more than four decades competing with each other for extraterrestrial supremacy ft.com/content/a15185…
What happened to Jack Ma? Since the tech billionaire annoyed Chinese President Xi Jinping last year, he has almost vanished. But his disappearance is a sign of something much bigger on.ft.com/3aeih7H
Ma founded tech giant Alibaba in 1999. Hundreds of millions of people every day now use his companies’ services for everything from buying coffee to getting loans ft.com/content/1fe055…
Ma’s cult-like following helped him build unrivalled influence for a businessman in China — but President Xi has been tightening control. Billionaires’ run-ins with the state are now so frequent that their new rule is: lie low ft.com/content/1fe055…
How much do artists make from streaming? In this new documentary our video journalist @Mediadon_ follows an up-and-coming artist as he tries to make a living during the pandemic in a music industry revolutionised by streaming ft.com/video/cae8ce65…
Traditionally, record deals paid artists upfront money in exchange for a share of the royalties from physical album sales while retaining ownership of the artist's master recordings. Musicians made money only after the advance was fully recouped👇 ft.com/video/cae8ce65…
As CD sales declined in the early 2000s, and labels started to lose money from illegal downloads, they began offering artists 360 deals, which take profits not just from album sales, but all other revenue streams, including touring and merchandise ft.com/video/cae8ce65…
Scientists are looking into whether different Covid-19 vaccines can be combined after concerns about rare side effects of the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab led some EU nations to offer alternatives for second doses.
Vaccine combinations have been tried for other diseases including malaria and HIV, when immunisations were not very effective. But since Covid-19 jabs have been highly effective, most governments recommend people stick to tested regimes ft.com/content/428d71…
Scientists are not concerned that mixing vaccines could be unsafe. The ‘main risk’ is if the immune system does not respond as well and the vaccine is made less effective, said Matthew Snape, associate professor at Oxford university ft.com/content/428d71…