London 2012 - New tickets Olympics released - Yahoo! Eurosport
London 2012 organisers are releasing a further batch of tickets for the previously sold-out Olympic opening and closing ceremony - but the cheapest available seat will be 995.
In addition they are releasing further contingency seats in athletics, swimming, football at Wembley, volleyball, table tennis and boxing, priced between 20 and 720.
Tickets will go on sale on a first come, first served basis on the London 2012 ticketing website from 11am this Friday.
Organisers Locog have also confirmed that eight million tickets have now been sold for both the Olympics and Paralympics - under two thirds of the total available.
Just over half a million non-football Olympic tickets are still available, while under 50 percent of the 2.5 million available inventory of Paralympic tickets remains unsold.
But the biggest concern for organisers will be the seemingly sluggish sale of football tickets.
After the recent draw at Wembley, 1.4 million seats went on general sale but only 150,000 have been shifted in the last month - leaving 1.25 million still available.
Last month organisers admitted that only 10,000 tickets had been shifted for the opening event of the Games, when, two days before the opening ceremony, Team GB's women footballers take on New Zealand at the 74,500 capacity Millennium Stadium in Cardiff.
"With 50 days to go there are still plenty of ways to join in and be part of London 2012. We are at advanced stages of venue planning and these represent the final release of Ceremonies and other sport tickets," said Locog commercial director Chris Townsend.
"Over the next few weeks we will release further tickets for other Olympic sports and keep people informed when tickets are available.
"We are delighted with ticket sales to date, and have sold another one million tickets in the last four weeks, prioritising people who were unsuccessful last time around."
Ticketing breakdown for London 2012
Olympics: 7 million sold, 1.8m still available (including 1.25m football)
Paralympics: 1.25 million sold, 1.2m still available
Luxury London market grows as family home supply stays low - The Move Channel
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Wednesday, June 06, 2012
Source: Ivan Radford
The total supply of London's property has reached £12 billion, according to WA Ellis, who suggests that stock levels are on the up while luxury home sales become more public.
One of the agent's partners, Richard Barber, comments on the state of the capital's market: "Some very fine new instructions have come on to the market in the last two weeks across all price ranges, including two rare first floor flats in Cadogan Square, but there now seems to be a hesitancy amongst potential purchasers. Sentiment is a strong ‘driver' of the market and nothing curbs potential purchaser's enthusiasm more than the prospect of economic uncertainty - and we have that in spades!
"It is interesting to see that the total stock on the Central London market, according to Lonres[1], now sits at just over £12 billion, as opposed to an average level of £10 billion - £10.5 billion over the last six months. This may be indicative of more stock coming to the market, but also, that more expensive houses are now being openly marketed, as opposed to being quietly, but unsuccessfully ‘placed' over the Spring.
"There is of course good reason to be optimistic with regards London property and it has proved to be an excellent long-term investment and provider of steady rental yield, however this optimism must be tempered with a realistic view of the economic crisis which we are still very much amidst.
"While there is still undoubted enthusiasm for prime property both from domestic and international purchasers, the perceived view that every property can command in excess of £2,000 per square foot is unrealistic. Indeed, I would caution against relying entirely upon rates per square foot as a means of valuation - it is a good check measurement but by no means the whole story. Guide prices should be carefully considered and justified.
"A realistic seller should want to see two or three keen purchasers competing for their property, as nothing stigmatises a property and diminishes a vendor's position more than a long stay on the market. In short, unrealistic vendors' expectations and hesitant and cautious purchasers do not make for an active market!
"Analysis of latest figures show the government received £5,960 million pounds from stamp duty land tax in 2010 - 2011, a 20% increase on the previous year, with £1,980 million pounds coming from transactions within London. Counter intuitively, the Chancellor may find that by increasing the rate of SDLT on properties over £2 million and curbing foreign companies' ability to buy central London property by imposing SDLT of 15% (and implied future measures), that his receipts for 2012-2013 are considerably less than in previous years. Indeed, the president of the National Association of Estate Agents, Wendy Evans-Scott, has called for an extension of the stamp duty holiday on lower valued properties, to try and kick start the extremely sluggish market that exists outside of central London."
Lucy Morton, senior partner and head of lettings at W A Ellis, adds: "The herald of summer brings with it the start of the season for the family home search. We have seen a noticeable increase in families wanting to secure their homes earlier this year before the Olympics start and London goes into lockdown with traffic restrictions and an influx of visitors. Families are taking properties a couple of months early in order to avoid what many believe could bring gridlock to some of our major routes. We are already noticing an increase of security awareness in London and this will no doubt only continue over the coming months. The Olympic let market, which has been the talk of the town over the year, still hasn't really happened - and, with some hotels now releasing rooms which they had held back, we do not believe there will be a rush of demand for short lets in Central London over this period at all.
"Rent levels have remained relatively static over the last month due to the nervousness in the market with the double-dip recession. It is quite apparent that the city corporations are still not bringing in expat middle management which has resulted in increased supply between £1,000 and £2,000 per week. The most competitive area of the market is the family house market where stock levels are low and demand levels high."
London close: Stocks surge after Draghi comments - Life Style Extra
- Cameron, Obama call for 'immediate plan'
- Miners and financials jump, ABG rockets
The Footsie finished over two per cent higher on Wednesday afternoon as miners and financial stocks surged on speculation of future changes to monetary policy in Europe.
The European Central Bank (ECB) decided once again to leave its key interest rate unchanged. The decision to leave the rate at 1% is more or less in line with the analyst consensus, although some economists were calling for a rate cut due to recent indications of falling economic activity in the Eurozone. In the subsequent press conference, however, ECB President Mario Draghi said: "We monitor all developments closely and we stand ready to act".
Draghi also said that a few members, though not many, had called for lower rates: this was a "significant turnaround", according to analyst Philip Shaw from Investec. "Overall we have not changed our views as a result of the press conference. We remain reasonably convinced that the ECB will bring the refi down again by 25 basis points to a new low of 0.75%."
Nonetheless, Draghi shied away from in any way promising a new round of long-term financing for banks (shorter term loans, however will be freely available until at least year's end). Some observers see in such a decision a desire on the part of the central bank not to make-up for governments' lack of action. Having said that, the ECB President seems to have weighed in favourably on the topic of the European Stability Mechanism injecting funds directly into banks," indicate analysts at Digital Look.
"It's now down to Ben Bernanke tomorrow to provide a further boost to the markets in order to keep the recent rally going," said analyst Craig Erlam from Alpari, drawing attention to tonight's release of the Federal Reserve's Beige Book.
In other news, Germany may be preparing a plan that will allow Spain to recapitalise its banks with the help of European partners but without having to implement additional economic reforms, according to official German sources.
After a phone conversation UK Prime Minister David Cameron and US President Barack Obama have said that there needs to be "an immediate plan" to resolve the sovereign debt crisis in Europe.
In domestic news, the Markit/CIPS UK construction purchasing managers' index for the month of May came in at 54.4 points, a three-month low, versus the 55.8 seen in April. Nevertheless, the consensus estimate was for a reading of 54.2.
FTSE 100: Miners and financials lead the rise
Miners surged today on the back of stronger metals prices. Meanwhile, Australian gross domestic product (GDP) rose by 1.3% during the first three months of the year, well ahead of the 0.6% growth expected by analysts, boosting the outlook for metals demand. Vedanta Resources, Randgold Resources, Fresnillo, Kazakhmys and Anglo American all finished the day over 7% higher. Also helping the sector were reports of Chinese authorities fast-tracking infrastructure investments.
Hedge fund manager Man Group, which had lost 40% of its share price in 2012 so far, was among the best performers after Citigroup upgraded its rating on the stock to buy, saying that "Man is now at the end of its downgrade cycle." However, the US broker did cut its earnings estimates for the group today.
Banks too were putting in a strong performance. Barclays announced this morning that its subsidiary Absa Bank has agreed to buy the accounts and receivables relating to the private label store cards of Edcon Proprietary in South Africa for around 0.8bn. Also to be had in account, Barclays is entitled to recover roughly $1.8bn of disputed assets and interest related to Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy, a US federal judge said, reversing a decision by a federal bankruptcy judge. Lloyds revealed that it is to sell a portfolio of Australian real estate loans for 388m. Meanwhile, HSBC said that the merger of its Omani operations with Oman International Bank has been approved and completed.
RBS's shares were trading over the 200p mark today after a share consolidation, which has had the counter-balancing effect of reducing the number of shares each shareholder owns while at the same time increasing the value of each share. Nevertheless, even based on Friday's adjusted share price, RBS shares were still sharply higher, as banking stocks made gains.
Heading the other way was Vodafone after going ex-dividend, meaning that new shares do not have the right to the group's latest pay-out. Vodafone also announced this morning that it is talking with Australian peer Telstra about buying its New Zealand subsidiary, TelstraClear. According to the Financial Times, the deal could be worth around A$300-400m, or 191-255m.
FTSE 250: African Barrick Gold sparkles late on
Shares in gold miner African Barrick Gold (ABG) surged in afternoon trading after its US parent company announced that it has replaced its President and Chief Executive Officer Aaron Regent with Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Jamie Sokalsky.
"On behalf of our board, I would like to thank Aaron for his significant contribution to Barrick's development. We are fully committed to maximising shareholder value, but have been disappointed with our share price performance," said Barrick's founder and Chairman Peter Munk.
Energy firm Premier Oil rose after seeing an encouraging drilling result on the Carnaby exploration well 28/09-5A in the Central North Sea Block 28/9.
FTSE 100 - Risers
Vedanta Resources (VED) 963.50p +9.05%
Barclays (BARC) 187.80p +8.24%
Randgold Resources Ltd. (RRS) 5,980.00p +7.65%
Kazakhmys (KAZ) 714.50p +7.44%
Fresnillo (FRES) 1,472.00p +7.37%
Man Group (EMG) 80.85p +7.09%
Anglo American (AAL) 2,091.00p +6.93%
Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS) 213.20p +6.65%
CRH (CRH) 1,121.00p +6.56%
Antofagasta (ANTO) 1,053.00p +6.26%
FTSE 100 - Fallers
Vodafone Group (VOD) 168.95p -2.71%
Tate & Lyle (TATE) 643.00p -1.61%
British Sky Broadcasting Group (BSY) 670.50p -0.89%
InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) 1,470.00p -0.81%
Smith & Nephew (SN.) 590.50p 0.00%
Severn Trent (SVT) 1,761.00p +0.06%
Next (NXT) 2,993.00p +0.07%
Whitbread (WTB) 1,843.00p +0.16%
Morrison (Wm) Supermarkets (MRW) 276.80p +0.18%
Weir Group (WEIR) 1,485.00p +0.20%
FTSE 250 - Risers
African Barrick Gold (ABG) 400.20p +14.54%
Talvivaara Mining Company (TALV) 147.20p +14.11%
New World Resources A Shares (NWR) 305.80p +13.68%
Centamin (DI) (CEY) 72.35p +11.05%
Aquarius Platinum Ltd. (AQP) 71.65p +10.57%
Avocet Mining (AVM) 161.60p +10.31%
Afren (AFR) 114.50p +9.78%
Petropavlovsk (POG) 425.60p +9.66%
Lonmin (LMI) 765.50p +9.51%
PayPoint (PAY) 698.00p +8.72%
FTSE 250 - Fallers
Supergroup (SGP) 285.90p -5.02%
Dixons Retail (DXNS) 12.84p -4.68%
RPS Group (RPS) 198.70p -3.21%
Bumi (BUMI) 320.00p -3.03%
Logica (LOG) 107.00p -2.73%
Home Retail Group (HOME) 71.50p -2.72%
JD Sports Fashion (JD.) 665.00p -2.71%
Spirit Pub Company (SPRT) 49.75p -2.45%
Booker Group (BOK) 84.10p -2.21%
Senior (SNR) 192.00p -2.19%
BC
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