A Singaporean group has bought London’s former Stock Exchange Tower in a £385 million deal. City Developments Ltd (SGX: C09) has said it has taken advantage of Brexit uncertainty and purchased 25 Old Broad Street from the US-based private equity group Blackstone. Frank Khoo, who is the group chief investment officer at CDL, said: “The short-term uncertainties surrounding Brexit have presented us with opportunities to acquire assets with deep value.” “We believe 125 Old Broad Street provides a complementary addition to our London portfolio, both from a geographic perspective and from a tenant mix perspective.” “We have confidence in the long-term fundamentals of London as a global financial hub with a robust office market,” he added. CDL also purchased Aldgate House earlier this year for £183 million. Andrew Hawkins, an international partner at Cushman & Wakefield, said that CDL bought the former Stock Exchange Tower at an “attractive price”. Blackstone (NYSE: BX) bought the tower for £320 million in 2014. A few iconic London buildings have been purchased over the past 18 months by foreign buyers. China completed a reported £200 million-plus deal to buy the Royal Mint Court site, which it plans to use for the UK embassy. Paul Goswell, the Managing Director at Delancey, said: “We are delighted with the People’s Republic of China’s decision to transform Royal Mint Court into their new London embassy. Delancey, along with its partner LRC Group, were fully committed to building out the office development, having spent the last four years designing the scheme in conjunction with Tower Hamlets and the GLA, both of whom have been constructive and supportive throughout the process.” “However, the scale of the buildings, coupled with the unparalleled history and large area of amenity and public realm, make it one of a kind in the City of London and undeniably perfect for the needs of a prestigious embassy. We wish the People’s Republic of China all the very best in their new London home.” In March last year, the “Cheesegrater” was sold for £1.15 billion to CC Land. “This sale shows continued investor appetite for best-in-class, well-located property in London,” said Tim Roberts, head of offices and residential at British Land at the time of sale.    

On Thursday’s close, the FTSE 100 was 41.12 points higher at 7,004.10. The index finished on the day’s high following the early low of 6,995.99. “Stocks have rebounded as solid corporate earnings and a lack of negative news prompted dealers to snap up cheap stocks,” said David Madden, market analyst at CMC Markets UK. “The mood has lightened on Wall Street, but we have seen bounce backs before, and seeing as interest rate hike fears, and geopolitical tensions still persist, the upward move may not last.”

WPP – shares fall 22%.

One of the biggest fallers of the day was WPP (LON: WPP), where shares tumbled over 22% on Thursday after reporting a fall in sales. The advertising group reported a 1.5% fall in net sales for the third quarter when it was expected to reach a 0.3% growth. The fall in sales led to almost £3 billion being wiped off the group’s market value. “Clearly we have underperformed our competition in the third quarter,” said Mark Read, WPP’s new chief executive. “We are not going to sugarcoat the reality.”

BT – shares down 4%

BT (LON: BT.A) also held back the FTSE 100 on Thursday after the group confirmed its new chief executive, Philip Jansen. Shares in the telecoms group have fallen 8% since the beginning of the year. Shares are down to 237.9p.

Lloyds Banking Group – shares up 2%

Shares in the lender (LON: LLOY) are up 2.1% to 57.9p. Investors welcomed the news that the chief financial officer George Culmer is stepping down after the group reported a 7% drop in pre-tax profit for the third quarter. Interactive investor’s head of markets, Richard Hunter, said: “Despite a slip in profits for the period, in the year to date pre-tax profit is above consensus, having risen 10%, and the post-tax number is up 18%” Top riser of the day was Chilean copper miner Antofagasta PLC (LON:ANTO), which was up almost 4% to 753.8p after recovering from Wednesday’s losses.

The European Central Bank announced today at the conference that they have left the eurozone interest rates at their current record lows. Mario Draghi, president of the ECB, spoke from Frankfurt today and labelled protectionism, emerging market vulnerabilities and financial market volatility as the key risks to eurozone recovery. Draghi went onto highlight the importance of protecting “precious” central bank independence. Perhaps in a swipe to Donald Trump, who has put pressure on central banks to change policies, the ECB president said: “Central bank independence is a precious thing. It’s precious because it’s essential for the credibility of the central banks, and credibility is essential for effectiveness.” “Actually, the legislators themselves, who are often the very same people who are arguing for the central bank to do this or that, should be the first ones to care about monetary policy effectiveness and central banks achieving their goals.” In regards to Rome, Draghi attempted to stay clear Italy’s 2019 budget, saying it was a fiscal discussion. However, he did add that he was “confident” that a deal would be reached between Rome and Brussels over the budget. Reacting to the ECB conference today, Silvia Dall’Angelo, who is the Senior Economist at Hermes Investment Management, said: “The bottom line is that the ECB is on a gradual path of monetary policy normalisation for now, but risks from protectionism, a further slowdown in external demand, domestic political instability, Brexit and volatility in financial markets cast a dark shadow on the ECB’s plans.” “Policy uncertainty has increased both externally and domestically: international trade tensions have remained high, there is no solution for the Brexit issue in sight, and the Italian government seems determined to defy the European fiscal rules. The recent turmoil in financial markets is a new addition to the list of downside risks,” she added.

Boeing has opened its first European manufacturing site in Sheffield. The world’s largest planemaker opened the £40 million plant with attempts to prove the firm’s commitment “to UK prosperity”. The new manufacturing site will make components for 737 and 767 passenger jets, which will be shipped to the US. Jenette Ramos, who is the Boeing senior vice president of manufacturing, supply chain and operations, said: “We appreciate all the community support for Boeing’s new advanced manufacturing factory in the UK. This is a fabulous example of how we are engaging global talent to provide greater value to our customers.” “In Boeing Sheffield, we are building on longstanding relationships and the region’s manufacturing expertise to enhance our production system and continue to connect, protect, explore and inspire aerospace innovation.” The opening of the new factory has created 52 new jobs. James Needham, the operations manager at Boeing Sheffield, commented: “Today’s about celebrating the milestone we’ve achieved in opening our factory.” “We have a tough challenge ahead to make the parts and hit the ferocious rate we need to achieve to keep these commercial airplanes flying us all on holiday next summer.”

A report by the digital, culture, media and sport committee (DCMS) has revealed the pay inequality of BBC employees. The report demands an end to the broadcaster’s culture of “invidious, opaque decision-making” regarding pay. Evidence has been put forward by witnesses that illustrates that the broadcaster is still failing its female employees. This includes 40 BBC staff and the BBC Women campaign group. The group represents over 170 presenters and producers including the well-known Mishal Husain and Jane Gravey. The report said: “Our evidence suggests women within the BBC are working in comparable jobs to men but earning far less.” “The corporation was unable to give us a good reason for why or how pay discrimination has been left unchallenged for so long.”

Moreover, it has been revealed that several female BBC employees were offered pay rises as a result to their equal pay complaints.

This contradicts the corporation’s claim that there were no equal pay issues in their case. The dealing of complaints left women “feeling worthless or diminished, ground down by an employer refusing to admit any equal pay liability”. The report revealed: “Where staff come forward with complaints, management must refrain from using unhelpful terminology and talk about these cases in terms of ‘equal pay’, rather than using euphemisms such as ‘fair pay’, ‘oversights’ and pay ‘revisions’, in an attempt to avoid the issues at hand.” “The BBC pay structure lacks central oversight and allows for too much managerial discretion over salaries. Pay decisions for senior positions appear to be made on an ad hoc basis.” “It is regrettable that it took the forced publication of this list and the resultant publicity to push the BBC into action on a longstanding problem.” “The BBC’s reluctance to tackle this issue has resulted in a loss of trust between staff and management. The BBC needs to commit to concrete targets to ensure that the pay of its high earners has absolutely no discriminatory element to it.” Earlier today, we reported that the gender pay gap was at a record breaking low. But large scale corporations are still failing to admit their incompetency when targeting gender pay inequality.

BT has confirmed its new chief executive, Philip Jansen. Gavin Patterson will be replaced by Jansen, the current boss of payment service Worldpay. It is said that BT’s leadership needed a fresh pair of eyes to help assess the business’s future. Philip Jensen’s base salary will add up to £1.1 million. This figure is £100,000 more than what Gavin Patterson was earning. Likewise, awards of up to 400% of his salary are included in his deal. This follows a yearly bonus of 240% of salary subject to performance. Additionally, the company will offer him a compensation of £900,000 as a result of the shares he will lose leaving Worldpay. Philip Jansen commented in a statement: “In a competitive market we will need to be absolutely focused on our customers’ needs and pursue the right technology investments to help grow the business.” “I’m excited to get to know all the people at BT and work together to take the business forward.”

Shortly before his leave, Gavin Patterson announced that BT will be implementing 13,000 job cuts.

This is one of the few challenges the company will face in the upcoming years. It is also battling with the UK government and Ofcom. This is over a multi-billion pound programme to upgrade Britain’s digital infrastructure. Moreover, the company has one of Britain’s largest corporate pension deficits. But, speculators have said that Jansen lacks the experience required to deal with fierce regulator Ofcom. However, chairman of the BT Group called him a “proven leader” because of his outstanding leadership experience with complex businesses. Jan du Plessis, chairman of BT Group, commented: “Philip’s strong leadership has inspired his teams, successfully transformed businesses across multiple industries and created significant value for shareholders.” Philip Jansen joins as shares in the business are down by over 8% since the beginning of the year. At 15:37 today, shares in BT Group (LON:BT.A) were trading at -4.2%. At 10:41 GMT -4 today, shares in Worldpay Inc (NYSE:WP) were trading by +1.53%.

Facebook has been fined £500,000 for the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Indeed, the social media network will receive the maximum fine penalty for collecting the data of tens of millions of users. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) revealed that the social media network permitted a “serious breach” to take place. As a result, the UK’s data protection watchdog has issued it a £500,000 fine. The investigation identified that between 2007-2014, Facebook gave app developers access to the personal data of its users. This took place without the informed consent of the individuals. The Cambridge Analytica scandal saw the illegal data collection of 87 million Facebook users. As a result, the information collected was used to assist Donald Trump’s presidential election campaign. Because the data breach took place prior to the new GDPR regulation, the maximum fine permitted is only £500,000. But, had the scandal taken place under the new EU data protection law, the fine would have been £17 million.

The £500,000 fine remains only 0.04% of Facebook UK’s annual revenue.

Under the £17 million fine, it would have been 4% of global turnover. Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham commented: “Facebook failed to sufficiently protect the privacy of its users before, during and after the unlawful processing of this data. A company of its size and expertise should have known better and it should have done better. “We considered these contraventions to be so serious we imposed the maximum penalty under the previous legislation. “One of our main motivations for taking enforcement action is to drive meaningful change in how organisations handle people’s data.” Facebook is currently “reviewing” the ICO’s verdict. It commented in a statement: “While we respectfully disagree with some of their findings, we have said before that we should have done more to investigate claims about Cambridge Analytica and taken action in 2015.” At 10:09 GMT -4 today, shares in Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) were trading at +2.31%.