All articles by Dr Clive Black
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InsightWe need supply-side reform now
The UK’s technocracy must be overhauled to liberate business and allow public servants to do their jobs.
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InsightCan we still count on ONS data?
Official statistics play up inflation and play down labour market strength in a highly politicised way.
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InsightAn anti-business UK government
Boris Johnson infamously gave his thoughts on what he thought of business, something that would not generally be appropriate to the decent minds of the British property sector, but let’s just say ‘eff it’. Some Tory ministers sought to smooth over the matter but for many, rightly, it was a ...
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InsightShore Capital Markets' Dr Clive Black on the CMA and the working of supermarkets
The reputation of politicians ebbs and flows, but now deep-sea creatures more often than not come to mind, such are the country’s scars from recent prime ministers the ever-lively Theresa May, the trustworthy Boris Johnson and the wildly off-the-cuff Liz Truss. If the Tories’ homework had to be marked, accommodating ...
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InsightJobs market set to spiral down
To me, Jacob Rees-Mogg does not represent the zenith of British political capability. However, his recent tactic of leaving messages for absent civil servants at empty offices may just represent the high water mark of the British labour market in recent times.
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InsightReading the ‘crisis’ smoke signals
These are difficult times for Britons: a nation still divided over Brexit, polarised views over whether to lock down or to be free, a truly appalling UK government with little to commend the performances of the devolved nations in truth, busted public finances – should they be rectified by taxation ...
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InsightInflation cloud looms on the horizon
At the end of the day, all economics and its subset of business, of which real estate is but one segment, are about supply and demand.
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InsightPrivate equity makes a supermarket sweep
Buses – wait for ages then three come along at once. Such is the case with the interest shown by CD R, Apollo and Fortress in Morrisons, an equity that has been sidelined in price terms for a sustained period.
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InsightHow supermarkets bounced back
Who would have thought ahead of this terrible pandemic that as a result of structural adjustments to the grocery trade, UK supermarket impairments would be written back to the tune of a quarter of a billion pounds in the case of Morrisons and Tesco UK alone?
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InsightSuburban life is sweet
In mid-August, the streets of suburban West Kirby in Merseyside were busier than the usually thronged arteries of central London.
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InsightDigital must pay its way
Shopkeepers in Britain have been brutalised by circumstance. The last 18 months have seen the feckless Theresa May government, the Brexit saga, the December 2019 general election and then, to top everything off, Covid-19.
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InsightThe supermarkets’ finest hour
The new decade started with worrying tensions between Iran and the US, which forced crude oil prices to spike to more than $70 a barrel.
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InsightWe must act now to save retail
The plight of the shopping centre in the UK is worrying… very worrying. Today, many if not all of our existing shopping centres simply would not be built. There is turmoil in this silo of the real estate market as net asset values, which equity capital markets have not believed ...
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InsightPoliticians crush confidence
The stoicism of the British shopper has been reaffirmed since the EU referendum. Putting rabid remainers and leavers to one side – people who frankly deserve each other (Jacob Rees-Mogg and Anna Soubry should help the nation by eloping and going somewhere else) – despite the wearing political chaos, folks ...
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InsightPoliticians dash high-street hopes
These are interesting times for the British consumer. Sainsbury’s chief executive Mike Coupe stated that the British were behaving as if they were in the midst of a recession. Yet consumers are living in a period with economic conditions most chancellors of the exchequer would die for.
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InsightTalking shops: Retail revolution looks set to break boring and standardised UK chains
Retail real estate could be on the precipice of an enormous structural change.
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InsightOne nil to grocers – but well-run retailers will always thrive
Talking shops: The second Thursday in January is a tsunami of retail reporting that makes it near impossible to see the wood for the trees.
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InsightTalk of ‘death’ of the physical store is a little premature
Most shopkeepers have been grappling with the trials, tribulations, opportunities and glories that the internet has brought to retailing for a couple of decades now.
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InsightAmazon is less slayer and more saviour of food retail property
When Amazon announced its intention to acquire top-end American grocery chain Whole Food Markets (WFM) for just $14bn (£10.7bn) last month, the facial expressions of a lot of real estate magnates with a presence in the retail space would have been interesting to see.
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Insight2017 predictions: talk of the death of the high street is overcooked
Structural change is firmly established in British retailing. We have one of the most advanced ecommerce capabilities for retailing in the world.
