Connaught Place 9th most expensive office location; Hong Kong tops chart

International News

New Delhi's Connaught Place (CP) is the ninth most expensive office location in the world with an annual rent of nearly $144 per sq ft, according to property consultant CBRE.
CP, located in the heart of the national capital, was at the ninth position even last year.
In its annual Global Prime Office Occupancy Costs survey, CBRE tracks the cost of leasing prime office space globally.
For the second year, Hong Kong's Central district retained the top spot as the world's most expensive market for prime office rents, with the prime occupancy costs valued at $322 per sq.ft.
"New Delhi's Connaught Place - central business district (CBD) retains its ninth position in the list as last year and the office occupancy cost is valued at $143.97 per sq ft," the report said.
Mumbai's Bandra Kurla Complex and Nariman Point CBD slipped to 27th and 40th positions, respectively.
Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) was ranked 26th and Nariman Point at 37th in 2018 ranking.
The current annual prime rent of BKC is valued at $90.67 per sq. ft and the Nariman Point CBD is valued at $68.38 per sq ft.

 Indian markets continued to have greater investment grade space in the CBDs of the different cities as prominent domestic and global corporates continued to favour investment grade space for setting up front their front offices in these cities," said Anshuman Magazine, Chairman and CEO, India, South East Asia, Middle East and Africa, CBRE...Read More

Trump lost $1.17 billion over 10 years on failed business deals: Report

International News
President Donald Trump, who won the presidency in part on his image as a successful business mogul, lost $1.17 billion over 10 years on failed business deals, according to tax records obtained by the New York Times.

The losses, in the 1980s and 1990s, were greater than those reported by nearly any other American taxpayer during that period, according to Internal Revenue Service data the Times said it had reviewed. In 1990 and 1991, according to the Times report, Trump’s loses of $250 million a year were more than double those of the nearest taxpayer the IRS collected information on.

Democrats in Congress have been battling for the release of the president’s more recent returns, a clash that may likely end in court. Trump sold himself to voters as a master deal maker, who could bring the same success to the country as he did to his businesses. While he never personally filed for bankruptcy, his businesses sought bankruptcy protection four times.

The Times said it did not obtain the actual tax returns, but instead received Trump’s IRS tax transcripts that included figures from his federal 1040 tax form from someone who had legal access to it. The Times said it was able to verify some of the figures by cross referencing them to other documents they had obtained.


 The losses cover Trump’s taxes from 1985 to 1994. The losses began with $46.1 million in 1985 from casinos, hotels and retail space, and grew year after year, the Times reported. The returns also show how Trump’s primary sources of income changed each year from stock market earnings -- in part from boosting stock prices by suggesting he would take over a company -- to an unexplained $52.9 million gain in interest income.Yet the income was offset each year by losses, which were so great that Trump would have been able to avoid paying income taxes for eight of the 10 years.

Uber drivers plan 12-hr protest in 6 US cities over low wages ahead of IPO

International News

Uber Technologies Inc's drivers in six US cities are planning to shut their apps for 12 hours on May 8 to protest against low wages and working conditions, two days ahead of the company's expected market debut.

Drivers in San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego, Philadelphia and Washington DC will shut their app on the day, when a separate protest will be carried out outside Uber's head office in San Francisco, a spokeswoman for Gig Workers Rising, a campaign for gig workers, told Reuters.
About "hundreds of drivers" are likely to join the protest, with Los Angeles and San Francisco expected to see a higher concentration of people, Clarkson said on Monday.

The drivers' demands also include employee benefit plans such as health care, holiday pay and representation in Uber's management structure.

Uber expects to price its IPO on May 9 and begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange the following day, people familiar with the matter have said.

"Uber's IPO will put millions in the pockets of executives, but the drivers who provide the service that is core to the company will get nothing, " Clarkson said.

To improve relations with drivers, Uber had announced plans to offer cash bonuses to some of its most active drivers with the option to purchase shares in the company's market debut.
Uber did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.

 (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi among world's cheapest cities to live in: Report

Economy & Policy:
Move over Singapore — the world's most expensive city has two new rivals.

After topping the Economist Intelligence Unit's Worldwide Cost of Living Survey for five years, Asia's Lion City has been joined by Paris and Hong Kong in a tie at the top of the table.

Zurich and Geneva rounded out the top five, while New York and Los Angeles reclaimed spots in the top 10 — ranking in seventh and 10th respectively — after slipping to 13th and 14th last year thanks to a weakening dollar.

The survey is designed to help companies calculate cost-of-living allowances and build compensation packages for expatriates and business travelers.

The trio of cities sharing the top spot are 7 percent more expensive to live in than New York, according to the EIU, which compiles its list from a survey of 160 products and services across 93 countries.

The Japanese port city of Osaka was another re-entry, moving up six spots to number five. Seoul (joint seventh place), Copenhagen (also seventh) and Tel Aviv (10th) round out the top 10 — which actually consists of 11 cities thanks to tied places.

"Weaker local currencies have pushed all five Australian and two New Zealand cities surveyed down in the ranking," the EIU said, accounting for Sydney's absence after it scraped into 10th position in last year's report.


 Outside the top 10, the EIU said the cost of living in Chinese cities remains relatively stable, while Southeast Asian destinations were moving up the ranks...Read More

HIV patient's remission spurs hope for curing AIDS-causing infection

International News

A stem-cell treatment put a London cancer patient’s HIV into remission, marking the second such reported case and reinvigorating efforts to cure the AIDS-causing infection that afflicts some 37 million people globally.

The patient has been in remission for 19 months, the International AIDS Society said in a statement. That’s too soon to label the treatment —which used hematopoietic stem cells from a donor with an HIV-resistance gene — as a cure, researchers said on Tuesday in a study in the journal Nature.
Hematopoietic stem cells give rise to other blood cells.

An embargo on the paper was lifted due to early reporting of the finding. The New York Times said on Monday that the latest surprise success confirms that a cure for HIV infection is possible. University College London researchers made the announcement at the annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Seattle this week.

Acute myeloid leukemia patient Timothy Brown, who became known as the “Berlin patient,” was treated aggressively more than a decade ago in an HIV-curing approach that hasn’t been successfully repeated until Ravindra Gupta and colleagues showed the effectiveness of a less aggressive form of treatment.


 Gupta’s case was in an HIV-positive man with advanced Hodgkin’s lymphoma who received a transplant of hematopoietic stem cells from a donor with two copies of the so-called CCR5 gene mutation -- the same one allegedly edited by He Jiankui that led to the birth of the world’s first gene-edited babies last year.“Coming 10 years after the successful report of the ‘Berlin Patient,’ this new case confirms that bone marrow transplantation from a CCR5-negative donor can eliminate residual virus and stop any traces of virus from rebounding,” said Sharon Lewin, director of the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity at the University of Melbourne, in a statement.

Budget content will be decided by economic realities, says Jaitley

Economic & Policy:

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that the interim Budg exist,” Jaitley said.et, to be presented on February 1, will be within the existing conventions. Its contents, however, will be dictated by economic compulsions and realities of the day, he added.

Amid concerns over his health, Jaitley was speaking live from New York and addressing an event in Mumbai organised by CNBC TV-18. Ahead of the next meeting of Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), Jaitley also said that real interest rates in India cannot be higher than most major economies.

“There is a convention for interim Budgets, on what you can and cannot present. Ordinarily, there should be no reason to move away from that convention, but then the larger interests of the economy always dictate what should be in the interim Budget,” Jaitley said, without disclosing details.


 “If we look at the bigger picture, there have been successes over the last few years. There have also been challenges. Without getting into specifics, some of those challenges really can’t afford to wait. There is a necessity to address some of them. We intend to work within the parameters of the conventions that...Read More