Business and Economics

London is a hub of roller-coaster house prices, new research has revealed, with the cost of a house per square foot varying by hundreds of pounds across the boroughs. Property buyers searching around Hounslow can expect to pay just £338 per square foot on average, while those with their hearts set on a home in Kensington and Chelsea should prepare to shell out £1,008 per square foot, reveals national housing and regeneration specialist, Keepmoat. Comparing Kensington and Chelsea and Hounslow...

Open-office plans are all the rage today. As companies occupy old warehouses with big open spaces the notion of having everything in the open has become quite appealing, and it can also make good business sense. Rather than having everyone stuffed into cubicles and behind office doors, open-office spaces have been found to be conductive to a creative environment and ripe for collaboration and a free exchange of ideas. One survey found 81 per cent of respondents said they believed...

This week is Road Safety Week and to commemorate the occasion Trusted Dealers has launched a new resource that breaks down nearly a decade and a half of figures about road safety in the UK – including accident rates, motoring offences, number of vehicles on the roads and traffic police levels. Data Drive uses official statistics taken from between 2000 and 2013, divided into four areas related to road safety. This information is displayed as a line graph that shows the rise and...

By Jack Peat, Editor of The London Economic  I'm not one to blow my own trumpet, but I've long championed the use of more natural tonics as spirit mixers. For years on end I'd watch punters muse over which overpriced gin to taste from behind a bar only for them to ask for a sugar heavy, artificially flavoured Schweppes mixer to overpower it. Philistines, I thought, but it's their cash, not mine. Thankfully, this weekend I found long awaited solace...

By David Rowsell, head of Money for Life Programme, Lloyds Banking Group Parents are their children’s first financial educators – teaching them how to spend or save and how money is earned. Financial behaviours and decisions – both good and bad – have a powerful influence on children’s financial attitudes and behaviour around money. Recent reports, compiled by family welfare charity, Home-Start, have found that around a third (31 per cent) of adults believe it to be inappropriate to include...

By Cecily Watret International business means becoming accustomed to new languages and the role they play in the corporate environment. Overcoming this language barrier can be quite a daunting task, which is why The Language Factory has created a new infographic focusing on five of the top languages in business and incorporating some interesting facts about the languages and the countries in which they are spoken. To give you a brief overview: German is on the rise in the US of A You...

The number of emails being read on mobile devices has soared, new research has found, with the number of emails read on iPhones doubling in a year. Data from SendGrid has revealed the number of emails read on iPhones doubled in London, with people in Manchester reading five times more emails on theirs. The number of emails opened on Android devices also shot up, increasing by 40 per cent from 2013. That compares to almost stagnant figures recording on Windows...

By Valentina Magri Inequality has been one of the most heated topics of economic debate in 2014 after the great success of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”. The book was awarded the 2014 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year prize on 11 November 2014. Mr Piketty, who is in China promoting his book, said in the accepting video that “issues about economic wealth and capital and public debt are too important to be left to a...

By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor In the heart of Soho on Windmill Street, located next to Paul Raymond’s famous Windmill Club and opposite the new Firmdale Hotel, a brand new radio station has evolved and is aiming to revolutionise the air waves in London and beyond. Soho Radio is a street level visible station, broadcasting via a large shop window which is a unique attraction in itself. I met up with Co-founder Dan Gray, 33, whose day job is in music management representing...