London's RICH - Are the street still Paved with Gold?

[drbubb]

The FIRE count.

 

Today's WSJ has a chart showing that "Financial workers share of US labor income"

is up to 10%. that's a big increase from around 8.0% in about 1990, 5.0% in the early 1960's

and only about 3.0% in teh earlt 1940's.

 

In the Great depression, there was an interseting move:

+ The percents spiked up from maybe 3.0% in 1920 to maybe 7.0% in 1929, and

+ Then fell rapidly back to about 3.0%- so 8it seems like over half the jobs were lost in about 12 years!

 

Any idea of what these percentages are in the UK?

[drbubb]

Commercial property rents collapse in London hedge fund areas

 

By Nick Clark ... Monday, 12 January 2009

 

Rents for plush offices in Mayfair and St James's plunged almost 30 per cent last year, hammered by the declining fortunes of many of their hedge funds tenants.

 

The commercial property agency NB Real Estate has released new research that shows the rent in swanky west London offices tumbled from £120 per square foot at the end of 2007 to £85 at the end of last year, a consequence of a bad year for hedge funds. They have been vilified for short selling bank shares, have suffered mass redemptions and experienced their worst ever full-year losses.

 

The average hedge fund lost 18.3 per cent, according to figures compiled by Hedge Fund Research.

 

The Hedge Fund Implode-O-Meter, a website set up to monitor collapsed and ailing alternative investors, now reports that 108 funds at 66 companies have collapsed since the end of 2006. The latest to succumb was the high-profile failure of Bernard L Madoff Investment Securities.

 

James Gillett, director of NB Real Estate's central London markets team, offered this analysis: "Investment banks and commercial banks have had it tough, but hedge funds are having an even tougher time.

 

"The boom in the hedge fund sector meant they paid scant regard to the property costs they were taking on. The sector's high profitability meant that they were willing to substantially outbid the rest of the market to get their staff into the right space quickly."

 

The downturn has forced hedge funds to cut costs and renegotiate rents, leaving the landlords with little option but to reduce their rents and increase incentives – which include offering rent-free periods – as the number of ten-ants dwindles.

 

The fall in rents was reflected throughout the City as financial groups suffered the effects of the worsening economy, although they were not generally as badly hit as the zones which are associated with hedge funds. Average rents across the City fell 19 per cent from £65 per square foot at the end of 2007 to £52.50 in the last three months of 2008, "as the credit crunch savaged the fortunes of the financial services sector", NB said.

 

/more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business...as-1301867.html

 

== ==

 

Haha . THis should not suprise anyone who took note of my 2007 article

[Member100]

Stepping into Sampson's shoes is Robert Peston, the BBC's business editor and pundit-in-chief, whose new book Who Runs Britain? has arrived just in time to serve as a valediction for the collapse of the global credit boom and the City of London's place at its centre.

 

Sub-titled "How the Super-Rich are Changing Our Lives", Peston's book covers the rise of private equity investment; the billionaires who made their money from it; the Labour government that did everything it could to facilitate London becoming their safe haven, even at the expense of the rest of the UK economy; and the impact it has had on the rest of us – yawning income differentials and disappearing pensions.

 

Peston is in a good position to comment. Before breaking the Northern Rock story last September, Peston had a meteoric rise through the ranks of British financial journalism. But unlike most business correspondents, he also has a background in political journalism, which makes him uniquely qualified to explain the almost symbiotic relationship between the new private equity entrepreneurs and Gordon Brown's Treasury.

==

 

More source material for a Dump Brown website

[drbubb]

Rich Londoners top list of house price losers

By Norma Cohen

 

Published: May 9 2009 03:00 | Last updated: May 9 2009 03:00

 

House prices in one of London's wealthiest boroughs, Kensington and Chelsea, have fallen at an annualised rate of 25 per cent over the past three months, according to data from the latest FT house price index, revealing the extent to which the downturn is affectingaffluent homeowners.

 

The average price of flats and terraced houses in the borough has fallen to £873,331 from £1.16m the year before - although homes there remain the most expensive in London.

 

In percentage terms, house prices in some outer London boroughs fell sharply: Sutton, Redbridge and Waltham Forest recorded annualised declines of 20.6, 18.9 and 18.3 per cent respectively over the past three months.

 

Overall, house prices in England and Wales fell in April for the 14th month in a row, declining 1.1 per cent from March. That leaves the average house at the level it was in January 2006.

 

Peter Williams, chairman of Acadametrics , which compiles the index on behalf of the FT, said there was little to indicate the bottom of the market had been hit. "The evidence from across the market remains mixed and there were few who were confidently predicting the bottom of the market."

 

. . .

"This is not so much 'green shoots' recovery, but a reluctance by sellers to reduce prices any further," Mr Williams said.

 

/more: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d7c1909e-3c2f-11...?nclick_check=1

 

 

[drbubb]

Leading the charge, or Heeding the Call...?

 

Hedge fund chief Crispin Odey ready to join tax exodus

 

 

Kate Walsh

HEDGE-FUND BOSS Crispin Odey has threatened to move his firm out of Britain to avoid the 50% income-tax rate on high-earners.

 

He joins a growing list of Britain’s wealthy businessmen and City financiers, including Hugh Osmond and Peter Hargreaves, who have become disenchanted at the new tax rate and the European Union’s proposed changes to regulation of private equity and hedge funds.

 

“We are seriously considering leaving,” said Odey, who runs the £3 billion Odey Asset Management. “This government is not interested in keeping London alive as a financial centre. Hedge funds are not yet flying but they are fluttering. Everyone is thinking about leaving.”

 

Odey, who made a fortune from short-selling British banks last year, is one half of the “Posh and Becks” of finance. His wife Nichola Pease is chief executive of fund manager JO Hambro and as a scion of one of the founding families of Barclays – where her brother-in-law John Varley is chief executive – is a City blueblood.

 

Odey feels his industry has been abandoned by the government as it focuses on winning over Labour core voters ahead of next year’s election.

 

“We no longer have any defence against the French and the Germans [who played a heavy hand in drafting the EU directive]. There is a great sense that the City is much less prized than it was,” he said.

 

He fears Geneva, Europe’s second hedge-fund hub after London, is “almost closed” as firms scramble to expand offices or secure new ones in the Swiss canton. Zurich, Monaco, Gibraltar, Hong Kong and Singapore are seen as possible destinations.

 

Odey, whose team of 50 operates out of a period building in Mayfair full of antiques and art, joked that as long as the rivers were stocked with salmon and the valleys with pheasants, he would move anywhere.

 

...more: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/busi...icle6256502.ece

[drbubb]

Do Tax Havens Cause Poverty?

http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/LSEPublic...12t0852z001.htm

 

Speaker: John Christensen; Felicity Lawrence; Nick Mathiason; Dr Attiya Waris

Chair: Professor Martin Albrow

This event was recorded on 30 April 2009 in New Theatre, East Building

Defenders of tax havens argue they provide vital financial services for international trade, and that most comply with money-laundering regulations and have juridical co-operation treaties. This panel will explore the issues surrounding tax havens, in particular their impacts on poor people.

Available as: mp3 (52 MB; approx 114 minutes)

Event Posting: Do Tax Havens Cause Poverty?

Editors note: We apologise for the poor sound quality of this podcast. Unfortunately the last few minutes of this event are missing from the podcast owing to technical difficulties.

[littledavesab]

Leading the charge, or Heeding the Call...?

 

Hedge fund chief Crispin Odey ready to join tax exodus

 

Hmm while he is probably serious it is possibly a poker play by someone used to playing for high stakes and will no doubt please his well of hedge fund investors. A good PR stunt?

 

Publicity aside it does show:

 

* reduced power / ever reducing power of the state to control things - such as taxation of global businesses and flight of capital

 

* an indication why Gordon Brown and all the other world leaders including the Germans are interested in closing off the "offshore" tax havens - our countries are so heavily indebted we cannot afford to loose the revenue !

 

 

 

[littledavesab]

The Germans put their foot in it

 

Apparently he said something like - in the old days we could have had an invasion to sort out a tax haven, unfortunate words seems as they did invade Luxemberg in the past!

 

Obviously this guy has never watched Monty Python - I mentioned the war once but I think I got away with it !

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/8494400

 

He angered Switzerland last year by calling for a "carrot and stick" approach to the tax issue and sparked outrage in March when he compared Germany's southern neighbour to "Indians" running scared from the cavalry.

After those comments, a Swiss member of parliament likened Steinbrueck to a Nazi.

On Tuesday at a meeting of European Union finance ministers in Brussels, Steinbrueck struck again.

In an apparent joke, he lumped Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Austria together with Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, as problem tax havens. [iD:nL6974392]

The comments drew rebukes from Switzerland and Luxembourg, as well as Free Democrat (FDP) Hermann Otto Solms, who spoke in the Bundestag shortly before Steinbrueck took the podium.

"You should know that Ouagadougou is not a country but a city. Burkina Faso is the country and this country is not on the OECD list of tax havens," Solms said.

"It would be better if you got your descriptions right, distanced yourself from this radical approach and negotiated with our allies instead of threatening them."

 

 

---------

 

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,4232212,00.html

 

Luxembourg's parliament has passed a resolution condemning statements made by German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck, in which he compared Luxembourg's banking transparency laws to those of Burkina Faso in Africa.

[lupercal]

How difficult is it to open a bank account in any of those countries. It does make me sad that I'm still bankrolling the one eyed scot.

 

There are many websites about it but Im suspicious of these because they are a great opportunity for ID theft. Has any one on here opened one?