LONDON (Reuters) – Luxury car maker Jaguar Land Rover, part of Tata Motors group, said it will invest 355 million pounds ($561 million) on a new engine plant in central England, which fought off competition from India with backing from the UK government.

The government, keen to support manufacturing in Britain, will provide up to 10 million pounds for a plant expected to create 750 jobs and thousands of jobs across the wider UK economy.

“JLR choosing Wolverhampton for its new engine plant in the face of tough international competition is a tremendous boost for manufacturing in the UK and the West Midlands in particular,” said business secretary Vince Cable.

Cable, a member of the Liberal Democrat junior coalition party, marked the announcement by visiting a JLR production plant in nearby Solihull. The Lib Dems are holding their annual conference in Birmingham, the largest city in the region.

Mike Wright, executive director at Jaguar Land Rover said they had considered building the facility in a number of locations within the UK and outside the UK.

“One obvious location would have been India,” Wright told journalists.

“There are a whole host of factors that go into these decision … but on the balance of all of those factors, we determined with the support of Tata Motors, in this instance, the UK was the best option,” he said.

LONDON, Sept 19 (Reuters) – Luxury car maker Jaguar Land Rover, part of Indian group Tata Motors , said it will invest 355 million pounds ($561 million) on a new engine plant in central England, which fought off competition from India with backing from the UK government.

The government, keen to support manufacturing in Britain, will provide up to 10 million pounds for a plant expected to create 750 jobs and thousands of jobs across the wider UK economy.

“JLR choosing Wolverhampton for its new engine plant in the face of tough international competition is a tremendous boost for manufacturing in the UK and the West Midlands in particular,” said business secretary Vince Cable.

Cable, a member of the Liberal Democrat junior coalition party, marked the announcement by visiting a JLR production plant in nearby Solihull. The Lib Dems are holding their annual conference in Birmingham, the largest city in the region.

Mike Wright, executive director at Jaguar Land Rover said they had considered building the facility in a number of locations within the UK and outside the UK.

“One obvious location would have been India,” Wright told journalists.

“There are a whole host of factors that go into these decision … but on the balance of all of those factors, we determined with the support of Tata Motors, in this instance, the UK was the best option,” he said.

PARIS (Reuters) – Frederic Oudea sidestepped the fallout from the world’s worst trading scandal at Societe Generale in 2008 but the latest French banking crisis may prove his toughest challenge yet.

Oudea, 48, has come under pressure as the bank’s shares spiral lower over deepening concerns about Greece, to which French banks are heavily exposed, and a possible credit ratings cut.

In a bid to staunch the bleeding at France’s No. 2 bank, Oudea on Monday announced new steps to cut costs and sell assets.

But some investors are not convinced by his strategy, which shies away from a more radical move such as a merger and places his three-year tenure under intense scrutiny.

“Oudea could have done a lot more to strengthen the bank,” said one london-based bank analyst.

“We had a similar example with RBS in 2007 — it was extremely reliant on wholesale funding markets…today there has been meaningful progress (at RBS),” he noted.

SocGen however had failed to aggressively reduce its balance sheet and to curb its dependence on short-term funding “to any meaningful extent” he added.

PARIS, Sept 12 (Reuters) – Frederic Oudea sidestepped the fallout from the world’s worst trading scandal at Societe Generale in 2008 but the latest French banking crisis may prove his toughest challenge yet.

Oudea, 48, has come under pressure as the bank’s shares spiral lower over deepening concerns about Greece, to which French banks are heavily exposed, and a possible credit ratings cut.

In a bid to staunch the bleeding at France’s No. 2 bank, Oudea on Monday announced new steps to cut costs and sell assets.

But some investors are not convinced by his strategy, which shies away from a more radical move such as a merger and places his three-year tenure under intense scrutiny.

“Oudea could have done a lot more to strengthen the bank,” said one london-based bank analyst.

“We had a similar example with RBS in 2007 — it was extremely reliant on wholesale funding markets…today there has been meaningful progress (at RBS),” he noted.

SocGen however had failed to aggressively reduce its balance sheet and to curb its dependence on short-term funding “to any meaningful extent” he added.

LONDON (Reuters) – Property prices in some central London hotspots are set to more than double by 2016, driven up by a mix of factors including volatile financial markets and major new transport projects such as Crossrail, according to a report from estate agency Knight Frank.

Domestic and overseas buyers have flocked to the London residential market in recent years as they look for a safe place to park their money.

“It’s really seen as safe haven for global money. We ran some figures showing how prime property is doing in terms of asset classes … it beat the FTSE 100 tracker over the last 10 years by quite a long margin,” said Grainne Gilmore, Knight Frank’s head of UK residential research.

“It certainly gives gold a run for its money,” she added.

Meanwhile the Crossrail development, Europe’s largest infrastructure project, will link Heathrow west of London to the east of the city through huge new tunnels to be run under the city.

“Crossrail is a massive theme going through this … it’s going to change a lot of things. If you live in Barbican or Farringdon (adjacent to the City financial district) you’re going to be able to get to directly to three airports within minutes,” she said.

As a result prices in this area and the City are set to rise 118 percent by the end of 2015, second only to the Vauxhall area in south London, where prices are forecast to jump 140 percent thanks to the redevelopment of Battersea Power Station along with U.S. plans to build its new London embassy just down the road.

LONDON (Reuters) – The head of homebuilder Redrow lambasted the “selfish attitude” of critics vying to block an overhaul of the building planning system that will enable more affordable homes to be built in the UK.

“(They are) saying that we’re creating urban sprawl, which is just emotional, scaremongering claptrap,” Redrow’s chairman and founder Steve Morgan told Reuters.

“The reality is far from the truth. If we as an industry built what the country requires — which is quarter of a million homes per annum — we will build on significantly less than 1 percent of the land in country,” said Morgan.

Senior ministers said Monday they would press ahead with proposals for the biggest shake-up to Britain’s building planning system in decades despite criticism that it would blight what remains of the nation’s dwindling countryside.

The government said that changes are vital to help to revive a faltering economy and to make housing more affordable. It says planning delays cost the economy 3 billion pounds per year.

“I said a year ago that we spend more on planning related fees than we do on bricks, and that remains the case and if anything it’s got worse,” said Morgan, who also owns Premier League football club Wolverhampton Wanderers.

“We strongly welcome the new initiative, which stops us becoming the most over regulated country in the world, to one where there is a sensible balance,” he added.

LONDON, Aug 30 (Reuters) – British housebuilder Bovis Homes reported a doubling of first-half profit, with build-cost savings pushing margins ahead of expectations as selling prices remained relatively stable.

“Assuming stable market conditions from here, we are now looking forward to growing volumes, increasing average sales price, and further improving margins,” chief executive David Ritchie said on Tuesday.

Bovis reported a first-half operating margin of 7.5 percent, up from 4.2 percent, and said it was eyeing double digits.

“We have got the visibility today to be talking about approaching 10 percent for the operating margin (by the year-end),” Ritchie said, adding the sales rate in the past eight weeks was up 16 percent.

Bovis’s first-half pretax profit rose to 8.1 million pounds, from 3.5 million in the 2010 period, on revenue up 16 percent to 134 million. Private home reservations rose 19 percent.

“With a reduction in build costs in the period and new land coming into the system, significant progress was made on gross margins,” Panmure Gordon analysts.

Britain’s largest housebuilder, Persimmon , said last week it was targeting an operating margin of about 15 percent in the next two years, with double-digit operating margin growth next year.

LONDON (Reuters) – A report by British lawmakers on Thursday criticised the funding structure behind many schools and hospitals, saying that Public Finance Initiatives (PFI) are not value for money, and projects must be paid for upfront by the government.

Higher borrowing costs since the credit crisis means that PFI projects are an “extremely inefficient” method of financing, according to a new report from a Treasury Select Committee.

In Britain, PFI has been used to build everything from roads to prisons, with a total of 339 deals worth $76.5 billion (46.3 billion pounds) projects from 2005-2009, according to the infrastructure Projects Database, with the model now widely exported.

The PFI model, which uses private capital to build public infrastructure, has failed in its central promises of not effectively transferring the risk of the project to the private sector, and getting a good deal for taxpayers, said the report.

It advocates much stricter criteria for PFI funding, taking projects onto the balance sheet and abolishing “perverse incentives” to use PFI.

If all PFI liabilities were included in the National Accounts, the Office for Budget Responsibility estimated that national debt would rise by 35 billion pounds or 2.5 percent of GDP.

“The markets will have already factored this in, in large measures, I would expect,” Chairman of the Treasury Select Committee, Andrew Tyrie MP told Reuters.

LONDON, Aug 19 (Reuters) – A report by British lawmakers on Thursday criticised the funding structure behind many schools and hospitals, saying that Public Finance Initiatives (PFI) are not value for money, and projects must be paid for upfront by the government.

Higher borrowing costs since the credit crisis means that PFI projects are an “extremely inefficient” method of financing, according to a new report from a Treasury Select Committee.

In Britain, PFI has been used to build everything from roads to prisons, with a total of 339 deals worth $76.5 billion projects from 2005-2009, according to the infrastructure Projects Database, with the model now widely exported.

The PFI model, which uses private capital to build public infrastructure, has failed in its central promises of not effectively transfering the risk of the project to the private sector, and getting a good deal for taxpayers, said the report.

It advocates much stricter criteria for PFI funding, taking projects onto the balance sheet and abolishing “perverse incentives” to use PFI.

If all PFI liabilities were included in the National Accounts, the Office for Budget Responsibility estimated that national debt would rise by 35 billion pounds ($57.5 billion)or 2.5 percent of GDP.

“The markets will have already factored this in, in large measures, I would expect,” Chairman of the Treasury Select Committee, Andrew Tyrie MP told Reuters.

LONDON, Aug 17 (Reuters) – European building groups Balfour Beatty Plc and Wienerberger AG issued downbeat statements on the struggling U.S. construction market, as slowing economic growth in Europe threatened to dampen a recovery.

Poor macroeconomic sentiment has hit cyclical stocks such as those of construction companies in recent weeks, as investors fret over the euro zone’s sovereign debt crisis and worry that the U.S. may be slipping back into recession.

Britain’s top infrastructure contractor Balfour flagged up tough trading conditions in the UK and United States, with construction and commercial building activity in particular showing no signs of improvement in the United States.

“We are going to see that (U.S.) market be quite tough for at least for a couple of years,” Balfour Chief Executive Ian Tyler told Reuters.

This echoes comments from Australasian building products makers Fletcher Building and Boral , who signalled a murky outlook for their biggest markets as they struggle with weak demand in Australia and the United States.

The global construction sector has had a sluggish recovery from the financial crisis, and civil spending cuts and austerity measures, especially across parts of Europe and the United States, have held the industry back.

“This sector will certainly not be immune to slowing growth,” said Markus Huber, head of German sales trading at ETX Capital.