Bovis Lend Lease is understood to have put up to 200 staff on notice of redundancy as the impact of the drop in commercial work bites the construction firm.
Sources close to the firm stressed that the move was part of a legal process and did not necessarily mean that that number of staff would lose their jobs; however, the move is evidence that the global financial turmoil is starting to hit major contractors.
It is understood that the firm has been particularly suffering in its UK Southern business, which is involved in the 2012 athletes' village project. The division focuses its work around key developers, including Land Securities and Stanhope, all of which have been affected by the credit crunch.
The £300million Walbrook Square Stanhope scheme on Queen Victoria Street, dubbed Darth Vader's Helmet is a case in point, has been delayed until at least 2009, partly as a result of legal wrangling between client Metrovacesa and freeholder Legal & General. Bovis has removed it's project team from the site now. The 92,900m2 project is being redesigned because of changing market conditions. It is understood that the alterations may include reducing the height of the planned 22-storey office blocks.
The development will have to be resubmitted for planning permission as a result of the revisions, but Metrovacesa still intends to complete it by 2012.
Metrovacesa agreed to buy the site in September 2007, but became engaged in a row with Legal & General over conditions. In May the pair negotiated an agreement to give Metrovacesa a more flexible leasehold interest.
It has been reported that Metrovacesa may consider replacing architects Jean Nouvel and Foster + Partners on the scheme as it is seeking designs that will be cheaper to build.
About UK Business Property
Whilst there are more than 20 portals covering residential property in the UK the commercial property market remains relatively unserved, with no site having a majority share of the total available commercial property listed. The internet has taken a significantly greater share of all advertising spend each year as it continues to prove that it is the most effective medium for advertisers to reach their audience.
Traditional estate agency methods remain quite successful in reaching the local market around a property, but do not capture leads from the national and international markets at all well. With increasing mobility of populations and business in the global village, it makes sense to expose commercial properties as efficiently as possible to the whole market. In 2006 there were 6 million searches (based on figures from Yahoo Search) made on the internet in the UK for commercial property of all types. Many of these searches will be fruitless as major search engines do not expose many of the available properties at present.
UK Business Property aims to change this by offering commercial agents important incentives to bring all their properties to the whole market. By linking to UKBP agents will bring more traffic to their websites. For agents who do not yet have a fully featured search on their website UKBP offers it's advanced search functions free of charge, in an easy to implement solution. The advantage is that you keep your visitors on your site and build your brand in your local market, while receiving leads from a national and international audience.
SOURCE:
http://www.articleclick.com/Article/Commercial-property-contractors-feel-pinch/1060628
Sources close to the firm stressed that the move was part of a legal process and did not necessarily mean that that number of staff would lose their jobs; however, the move is evidence that the global financial turmoil is starting to hit major contractors.
It is understood that the firm has been particularly suffering in its UK Southern business, which is involved in the 2012 athletes' village project. The division focuses its work around key developers, including Land Securities and Stanhope, all of which have been affected by the credit crunch.
The £300million Walbrook Square Stanhope scheme on Queen Victoria Street, dubbed Darth Vader's Helmet is a case in point, has been delayed until at least 2009, partly as a result of legal wrangling between client Metrovacesa and freeholder Legal & General. Bovis has removed it's project team from the site now. The 92,900m2 project is being redesigned because of changing market conditions. It is understood that the alterations may include reducing the height of the planned 22-storey office blocks.
The development will have to be resubmitted for planning permission as a result of the revisions, but Metrovacesa still intends to complete it by 2012.
Metrovacesa agreed to buy the site in September 2007, but became engaged in a row with Legal & General over conditions. In May the pair negotiated an agreement to give Metrovacesa a more flexible leasehold interest.
It has been reported that Metrovacesa may consider replacing architects Jean Nouvel and Foster + Partners on the scheme as it is seeking designs that will be cheaper to build.
About UK Business Property
Whilst there are more than 20 portals covering residential property in the UK the commercial property market remains relatively unserved, with no site having a majority share of the total available commercial property listed. The internet has taken a significantly greater share of all advertising spend each year as it continues to prove that it is the most effective medium for advertisers to reach their audience.
Traditional estate agency methods remain quite successful in reaching the local market around a property, but do not capture leads from the national and international markets at all well. With increasing mobility of populations and business in the global village, it makes sense to expose commercial properties as efficiently as possible to the whole market. In 2006 there were 6 million searches (based on figures from Yahoo Search) made on the internet in the UK for commercial property of all types. Many of these searches will be fruitless as major search engines do not expose many of the available properties at present.
UK Business Property aims to change this by offering commercial agents important incentives to bring all their properties to the whole market. By linking to UKBP agents will bring more traffic to their websites. For agents who do not yet have a fully featured search on their website UKBP offers it's advanced search functions free of charge, in an easy to implement solution. The advantage is that you keep your visitors on your site and build your brand in your local market, while receiving leads from a national and international audience.
SOURCE:
http://www.articleclick.com/Article/Commercial-property-contractors-feel-pinch/1060628
0 comments:
Post a Comment