Will this major new hotel make Colombo a destination in its own right?
Of course, Colombo locals and businesses are doing their best to secure a spot on the itinerary of many of these travellers, especially as the city has much to offer, from fascinating art galleries, to glorious temples and plenty of hip new spots like Chill Cafe, Eskobar, and Kiri Kōpi popping up in the past few months. Plus, Dom Fernando of Paradise Soho is returning to his roots with his latest venture, a restaurant named Open Door Policy, scheduled to open sometime next month. A handful of hot new hotel openings are adding to the hype. One of which comes from the Sri Lankan-owned Cinnamon Group, who already boast over 13 properties throughout the country.
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Reuters
19 hours ago
- Reuters
Nasdaq-bound Hotel101 eyes expansion into Latin America, Oceania, CEO says
SINGAPORE, June 6 (Reuters) - Hotel101 Global, a unit of Philippine-listed real estate company DoubleDragon ( opens new tab, is looking to expand into Latin America and Oceania in addition to growing its presence in existing regions including Asia, its CEO Hannah Yulo-Luccini told Reuters on Friday. Last month, Hotel101 entered into a partnership with Saudi Arabia-based Horizon Group to build 10,000 rooms or 20 hotels across the Kingdom, marking its fourth destination outside of the Philippines and after Japan, Spain and the U.S. CONTEXT Hotel101 is due to list on Nasdaq following a merger with a Nasdaq-listed special purpose acquisition company JVSPAC Acquisition Corp (JVSA.O), opens new tab that puts Hotel101 equity value at $2.3 billion. Both companies on Monday had obtained regulatory nod to proceed. JVSPAC is a publicly listed shell that raises funds to merge with a private entity. WHY IS IT IMPORTANT Upon listing, the combined company will operate as Hotel101 and will become the first Philippine-owned company to be listed and traded on Nasdaq, which the CEO says will help it with its international expansion. DETAILS Singapore-headquartered Hotel101 builds and operates hotels with standardized, 21 square metre rooms that it sells individually to investors. Its asset-light business model generates revenue first from room sales and then from the recurring income from day-to-day hotel operations. KEY QUOTES: "This whole process of becoming a Nasdaq-listed company has really allowed us to really have that global credibility as we expand the brand to 25 countries in the near term," Yulo-Luccini said. "Other than the Saudi JV, we're actually working on five more hotel JVs."
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Scotsman
a day ago
- Scotsman
How Edinburgh can bolster its position as a global asset management centre
PA Sign up to our Scotsman Money newsletter, covering all you need to know to help manage your money. Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... The return to private ownership of Royal Bank of Scotland owner NatWest last month was an important bookend in the soul-searching about Edinburgh as a financial centre. While it's true that Bank of Scotland owner Lloyds employs about as many people in Scotland as it does in London, banking is decidedly not the future. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Yet the need for the UK's largest financial centre after London to come up with a compelling global story has not gone away as other regional centres attract a critical mass of financial players. In the latest Global Financial Centres Index, Edinburgh retained a respectable 29th position and Glasgow jumped five places to 32. Yet competition from nimbler hubs like Seoul (10th ), Luxembourg (16 th ) and Amsterdam (18th ) is intensifying. Now, Scottish Financial Enterprise (SFE), thinks it has an answer. The lobby group last month published a strategy for asset management, one of three 'global opportunities' for Scotland (the others being fintech, and green and sustainable finance). Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Asset management is obviously an Edinburgh strength. The city has long been the largest such centre outside London, led by Baillie Gifford, Aberdeen and Dutch-owned Aegon Asset Management. Yet its position has been slipping due to the rise of 'passive' investing, which relies on index tracking strategies rather than the expertise of 'active' stock-picking investors, an Edinburgh strength. Acquisitions have also played a part: Franklin Templeton bought Edinburgh Partners in 2018, Legg Mason acquired Martin Currie in 2014 and Walter Scott became part of Mellon Financial (now BNY) in 2006. The harsh reality is that AUM in Scotland has been in steady decline since at least 2015, slipping to £493bn in 2023 from £548bn nine years ago, according to the latest available data from Investment Association (IA). Scotland's share of total UK AUM halved in the same period to 5 per cent, having reached a post-financial crisis peak of 13 per cent in 2010. The IA believes this is not all down to shrinking AUM in Scotland and that portfolio management has become more concentrated in London, leaving 'business operations' – that is, the middle-office plumbing behind the people who make investment decisions - to Scotland. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad This explains why Edinburgh and Glasgow have become big centres for what's also referred to as 'asset servicing', with Wall Street driving the trend. BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, last month moved its roughly 1,000 employees into a new office in Edinburgh that will in time be the firm's fourth largest globally. Its presence in the city dates back a quarter of a century and functions as a hub for an investment platform used by BlackRock's portfolio managers and those of its clients across Europe. Similarly, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley have technology hubs in Glasgow employing a combined 5,000 people. Many are data analytics graduates from Scottish universities in jobs helping the banks to run front office functions around the world. JP Morgan's office hosts an 'asset management technology' team that's one of 10 the bank maintains globally. The SFE argues that Scotland can attract more asset servicing as firms look to escape cost pressures New York and London by relocating to cheaper regional centres, especially those with strong technology capabilities coming out of their universities, like Boston. Sandy Begbie is the chief executive of Scottish Financial Enterprise (SFE). Picture by Graham Flack | Contributed/Graham Flack The SFE's doggedly optimistic chief executive, Sandy Begbie, thinks there is also a chance of attracting more front office roles to Scotland, including from firms already in London. A 'wage benefit' of around 30 per cent compared to London, coupled with Scotland's much-touted lifestyle advantage, means there's 'a decent arbitrage to be had' in shifting personnel to Scotland, he says. Of course, there is still the awkward income tax differential that adds an offsetting 'Scotland weighting' to senior roles. Nonetheless, Edinburgh does have a good case to make in the intersection between technology and finance. A lot is happening between the University of Edinburgh and the private sector, producing examples of the 'digital ecosystems' that SFE thinks are important to growing the asset management pie. This mostly revolves around using AI, distributed ledger technology and tokenisation. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Last year, Aberdeen and the university launched a Centre for Investing Innovations that's working on an AI-powered 'research companion' that would use large language models to synthesise the huge amount of data needed to make investment decisions. A firm called Level E, founded by former Mexican banker Sonia Schulenberg, has developed 'AI-driven autonomous investing'. Rushad Abadan, general counsel at Aberdeen, argues that productivity levels will continue to increase with better technology and that this will 'play into' where AUM gets managed. 'If you think about it like that then I think Scotland has a lot to offer in terms of where the research is being done,' he says. The SFE calls for 'a more clearly articulated government strategy' for growth and investment in the asset management sector and its importance to Scotland – as Singapore, Ireland and Luxembourg do. This needs to be joined up with 'other UK industrial and growth strategies'. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Kate Forbes, deputy first minister, has developed a pitch-perfect narrative on inward investment that recognises the importance of making a globally competitive offer in core areas like offshore wind. At Panmure House in Edinburgh this week, she talked of her 'mission to make Scotland the most attractive destination for investment in the UK.'
BBC News
a day ago
- BBC News
Why Zia Yusuf's resignation matters for Reform UK
The resignation of Zia Yusuf as Reform UK's chairman matters because he was a central character in the stand out trend in British politics since the general election – the rise and rise Nigel Farage's party.I first met this thirty something Muslim son of Sri Lankan immigrants, a former Conservative, when he was unveiled by Reform almost exactly a year ago, as a donor who had just handed the party £200, is a self-made multi millionaire after setting up and then selling Velocity Black, a luxury concierge long after his donation to Reform, he was offered and accepted the job of party chairman. And he wouldn't just be someone behind the scenes, he would be a public figure how can we measure how important this moment is? I reckon there are three things worth examining as we assess Zia Yusuf's contribution to Reform money. Yusuf is a rich man, and giving away £200,000 is generous by any one's book. But Reform UK received £2.8m in donations last year, so the party isn't reliant on his Yusuf's heritage and ethnicity. To expand in popularity, let alone win a general election, Reform needs to widen its appeal. Having a minority-ethnic man in his thirties as one of its figureheads helped temper the criticism from rival parties that Reform, or at least some of its members or supporters, were thirdly, his organisational abilities. Yusuf is credited with building much of the infrastructure up to now that Reform is attempting to assemble at lightning speed, to turn them from an insurgency into general election winners in just a handful of years. And now he is gone. The party has soared during his tenure, but it is also true that the now former chairman put rather a lot of noses out of joint within Reform."Were his interpersonal skills at the top of his list of attributes? No," Nigel Farage told GB shown the door would joke that they had been "Goldman sacked" – a reference to Zia Yusuf's former employer, the investment bank Goldman tell me the grumbles about his approach to running the party ran well beyond the gripes you can find in any workplace about the Farage and the parties he has led – the UK Independence Party, the Brexit Party and Reform UK – have one heck of a track record of bust ups, fall outs, sackings and Carswell, Diane James, Patrick O'Flynn, Godfrey Bloom, Suzanne Evans, Ben Habib, Rupert Lowe, the list goes on and on. And now Zia big reason why this latest departure really matters is it is a stark reminder that a central ingredient in the rapid scaling up of Reform UK is going to be the hiring of staff who stick around long enough to help turn it into a potentially election winning party is attempting something utterly unprecedented and while the force of Nigel Farage's personality has and can take them a long way, bringing in a range and depth of expertise at least some of whom can last the course will be central Farage has never managed that right now, he has to find himself a new chairman.
