Strange Financial Bedfellows

"There is a general eastwards drift of tenants across London at the moment. Some tenants are considering Docklands at the moment, looking to do a good deal expecting that rental gap to narrow."
Mat Oakley, director, commercial research, Savills PLC property brokerage

Qatar returns for Canary Wharf owner with £2.6bn cash offer ...

www.telegraph.co.uk

New offer of 350p a share is almost 19pc higher than the Middle Eastern investor's earlier indicative 295p a share approach

Business, after all, is business. And making money, piles of it, is what property developers are all about. The Canadian Reichmann brothers were geniuses at it; property development, raking in profits, expanding their financial empire, recipients of envious and covetous attention from all within the financial community.

They had vision and they had the boldness of action resulting from that vision, which gave them the impetus to do what others barely registered. When they transformed a derelict site on the north bank of the River Thames and out of the site rose a new office cluster they called Canary Wharf, it was the talk of the property development world in the 1980s.

In the 35 existing office buildings and four shopping malls on Canary Wharf, over 100,000 people work. Companies like JPMorgan Chase & Co. have their presence there. The 50-storey tower at One Canada Square was the tallest building in the United Kingdom until 2010 when the Shard took its crown of tallest-most-impressive.

Canary Wharf Group plans now to construct over 3,600 homes and other projects at Wood Wharf next to the office district at a cost of $4.6-billion, and other projects are also in the planning stages. Brookfield Property partners LP is now entertaining serious offers alongside Qatar to invest in Songbird which controls the Canary Wharf financial district.

Buildings with ten million square feet of space are envisioned for construction on the site according to plans by Canary Wharf Group which won approval for the construction of residential and commercial buildings in anticipation of the working population of the district doubling by 2025 on completion of the project. The arrival of the Crossrail train network will add capacity to London's rail network and is expected to life office rent at Canary Wharf.

And Qatar wants to be part of the profitable enterprise. Its London property portfolio already includes stakes in the Shard skyscraper, Harrods department store and the Olympic Village. If its bid is successful, and no doubt it will be, it will plan to construct thousands of homes in London. It certainly has the wherewithal, Qatar's natural gas reserves ensuring it the world's richest country per capita.

Qatar's Investment Authority is one of the largest such funding agencies and Qatar is willing to buy 9% of Brookfield. There's no disconnect, no concerns, no apprehensions about the fact that the Middle East's most generous funder of terrorist groups will have such a stake in London real estate. The country that funds Al Jazeera, a well-known defender of the Muslim Brotherhood on Arab news sites, to have a large financial stake in the London market.

Qatar is busy using its massive fossil fuel energy profits to fund jihadist groups invested in terrorism. Jihad is the means by which violent Islamists ply their obligation to Islam to further its interests by persuading the West to submit to Islam or die denying its supremacy in their bid to achieve a global caliphate. And the very country that is helping Islam to grow by means fair and foul, is busying itself growing its financial empire within the countries set on course to Islamization.

From a holding stake in Barclays to Fisker Automotive and the Volkswagen group, the Harrods Group and Sainsbury and Filmyard Holdings which owns Miramax and Credit Suisse's headquarters in London. Qatar Investment Authority owns shares in Apeldoorn, has its fingers in the Royal Dutch Shell's London headquarters.

The government of France offered tax exemptions for Qatari real estate investments. QIA has a stake in Royal Dutch Shell, bought the French football club Paris Saint-Germain F.C. through its Qatar Sports Investments, bought the P.S.G. handball team and launched French television channels beIn Sport. Qatar Holdings planned to invest $5-billion into Malaysian petrochemical projects and planned a $200-million investment in India through Kotak Realty.

An agreement between CITIC Group Corp. and Qatar Investment Authority was to launch a $10-billion fund to invest in China. Qatari Diar had stakes in Vinci employing 183,000 in 100 countries and bought the Port Tarraco Marina in Tarragona, Spain. There are 49 projects planned and in development in 29 countries around the world.

Are there no concerns over this in the hallowed halls of global finance? Money/investment talks loud and louder. Drowning the faint echo of muffled Islamism working in covert tandem with energy resources. Will the downturn in energy pricing eventually bear a saving grace on the trajectory? A financial ignoramus is curious, and just asking what comes to mind...