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The property market in London has always stood out, but Manchester has shown an equal performance acting as UK’s second city. As a city thriving under an economic boost and industrial revolution, Manchester’s property market has grown by 43% in just 3 years. Under the Northern Powerhouse initiative and infrastructure redevelopment, the property market is set for a soaring growth. Golden Emperor hosted ‘UK Manchester’s Tallest Residence – Property Investment Seminar’ over the past weekend and launched Deansgate Square, a residence located in Castlefield, nearby Manchester’s shopping district and CBD. Units quickly sold and the event received wide support from investors in Hong Kong.

Above: Golden Emperor Properties Managing Director, Mr. Terence Chan, analyzes Manchester’s newest market trend.

Above: The Deansgate Square project received wide participation and support from investors.

The UK government has announced its ambitious plan for its 2040 Road to Zero strategy. As technology advances, electrical vehicles (EV) will dominate the market to phase out diesel and petrol vehicles. Charging units and the modification of existing infrastructures must be made to accommodate EV use and UK’s plan is to have EV or hybrids dominate 50% of share in the UK market by 2030.

The new Workplace Charging Scheme, will increase in the value of grants to install charging stations for non-profit organizations and public government services by 75%. The scheme will aid in establishing more charging units around the country.

The Road to Zero Strategy will help the government achieve key elements of its modern Industrial Strategy. Besides the hefty investment sum of 30 million pounds into V2G technology research, the transfer of electricity from the vehicle back to the charging grid, the government announced its 4 billion pound investment into aiding charging infrastructure building and an additional 40 million pounds will be used to secure a council to monitor the progress of the strategy. By 2020, the government will invest 4.5 million pounds to help install charging units on the streets and residences.

The UK wishes to reduce carbon-emission by 2050 back to 1990’s 80% rate and a series of charging stations on the roads by 2050, key to reducing high polluting diesel and petrol vehicles by 2040. The limiting factor, is the amount of mileage that EV runs on, which the public has requested the government to provide addition aid.

The government expects the transition to be led by industry and consumers. A review of the plan will take place in 2025 to consider what interventions are required if not enough progress is being made. Secretary of the Department of Transport, Mr. Chris Grayling proposes, “the strategy will be the largest technology advancement and economic boost for UK and will further place UK at the forefront of the industry worth up to 7.6 trillion pounds by 2050.”

EV technology is a prominent market globally. Not only is the technology able to reduce carbon uptake to minimize globally warming and pollution issues, the business market of EV, since the establishment of the Paris Agreement to reduce emission, has propelled countries around the world to devise EV production.

Source: Energy Trend 

The World Cup Event was the hottest event in the past few weeks and Golden Emperor joined the football fever! We hosted a watch party on the day of the final game on July 15th with our prestigious clients at a popular bar in the city. It was a lively night with free-flow beers and snacks, along with a big screen TV to watch the game!

Alibaba Group is holding talks with UK’s British Telecom (BT). The China-based tech giant will be partnering up with British Telecom similar to its partnership with Germany’s Vodafone to expand its market in Europe. Alibaba Cloud’s partnership in the UK will challenge the dominance of Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Europe.

Alibaba Cloud has came to terms with the IT department of British Telecom, to forge an agreement similar to that of Alibaba and Vodafone. A spokesperson from British Telecom has confirmed the progressing partnership through an email announcement.

Alibaba and Vodafone’s strategic partnership began in 2016 to provide Alibaba’s first data center in Europe. The data processing plant is placed in Frankfurt, Germany, to transfer and store computed data and provide a European base for Chinese companies and enterprises.

Synergy Research Group reported in June that Alibaba Cloud is the 4th largest cloud network provider globally and is just behind Amazon Web Services, Microsoft’s Azure and Google.

Currently, Europe’s cloud computing network is led by Amazon Web Services, including that of British Telecom and Spain’s Telefonica. Alibaba Cloud’s partnership with British Telecom will expand its market in Europe in addition to challenge AWS’s prominent status in the continent.

Additionally, Alibaba and Alibaba Cloud has signed a memorandum with France’s top logistics company, Bollore, to work on transport and communication services in cloud computing, big data and artificial intelligence.

“UK security agencies may scrutinize any partnership between Alibaba (SCMP)”, as the government of United States has strictly reinforced partnerships since Zhongxing Telecommunication Equipment Corporation’s (ZTE) incident. This has perhaps delayed Alibaba’s plan to expand its market in North America, thus choosing to expand its European network beforehand.

Source: South China Morning Post, Inside News

As London Tech Week progressed, a number of high-tech companies have announced their investment plans into the high-tech sector in the UK. According to an announcement made by the UK government, a capital totaling to nearly 2.3 billion pounds have been injected into the UK to create 1,600 new job opportunities. The increased amount of investment will be able to provide a platform for high-tech corporate to form in the UK in order to balance against tech giants Google and Facebook.

Amazon, Mubadala and other international corporate have announced their expansion into the UK market recently. Salesforce, the largest cloud computing company favored by Chinese and American companies, has announced its investment plan of 2.5 billion USD in UK the next five years. The plan will improve UK’s businesses and growth in the high-tech industry.

Although the UK struggles under an unpredictable outcome from Brexit, London is still the most prominent city for high-tech investments. According to London & Partners, in 2017, the amount of investments and capital injection that UK received was 4 times of that in Germany, Sweden, France and Italy.

Minister of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS), Mr. Matt Hancock reveals to CNBC in the latest conference with UK’s high-tech corporate, many remain highly confident in the development of high-tech businesses and fin-tech performance after Brexit. The UK possess a mature market and system for high-tech developments and even when Brexit takes place, London will remain to be the traditional hub for high-tech development similar to China and United States of America.

ARM, a British multinational semiconductor and software design company, was sold to Softbank years ago at a cost of 240 million pounds. The funding were distributed among UK’s high-tech development and sustainability systems to aid growth in the sector. Ocado, UK’s most prominent online supermarket is worth 10 billion USD and is the highest competitor against Amazon on the market. Hancock wishes to create partnerships with these private sectors in the UK to propel the high-tech development of the UK.

Hancock points out UK has the most unicorn companies (those worth 1 billion USD) compared to the rest of Europe. “I believe that this is due to the originality and the maturity of the start-up system in the UK, as we have a well developed high-tech sector including that for Fin tech developments. UK is a long-history financial hub, and with our technology and an educated workforce, we can further develop this industry.”

Source: Tech News