Target Healthcare rent rises, Sirius appoints new finance chief

Stocks to watch

UK care home investor Target Healthcare REIT on Monday reported a rise in contractual rent for the half year of 2.9% to £57.1m, including like‑for-like rental growth of 1.8%. Underlying profits, measured by adjusted EPRA earnings, increased by 37% to £18.7m.

Sirius Real Estate said on Monday that it has appointed Chris Bowman as its new chief financial officer. Bowman brings nearly 25 years' accounting, finance and capital markets experience, it said. Most recently, he led the UK investment banking arm of Berenberg.

Newspaper round-up

The head of the International Monetary Fund has warned that the global economy faces risks to its financial stability because of the turbulence in the banking sector.Kristalina Georgieva, the managing director of the Washington-based lender of last resort, said rising interest rates had put pressure on debts, leading to “stresses” in leading economies, including among lenders. – Guardian

The cost of HS2’s revised and postponed London Euston terminus has almost doubled to £4.8bn since 2020, according to the public spending watchdog, with millions wasted on botched decisions. The government announced last month that work on the high-speed line’s central London station would be paused. But the National Audit Office warned on Monday that the move would “lead to additional costs and potentially higher costs overall”. – Guardian

Fiscal drag will pull 55,000 working parents into Jeremy Hunt’s childcare tax trap over the next five years, analysis by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) shows. The number of parents who will find it harder to go back to work or will be incentivised to keep their salaries low will swell by 71pc, in a process known as fiscal drag. – Telegraph

The world’s second-biggest fund manager has signalled its confidence in Britain with plans to open its second UK office, a move that will create 100 jobs. Vanguard, which manages $7.5 trillion (£6 trillion) globally, is to announce plans for a new office in Manchester, according to City sources. The US fund manager will lease 14,000 square feet in the Landmark development in St Peter’s Square. – Telegraph

The Dubai-owned company that admitted it had broken employment law by dismissing 800 British crew at P&O Ferries last March and replacing them with cheap foreign labour has been awarded a multi million-pound windfall under Rishi Sunak’s freeports scheme, in what unions condemned as an “appalling” decision. – The Times

The head of the main City regulator at the time of the last financial crisis has spoken out in the controversy surrounding the recent wipeout of $17 billion of Credit Suisse bonds and criticised the supervision of the bank. Lord Turner of Ecchinswell, who was chairman of the Financial Services Authority from 2008 until it was abolished in 2013, told The Times that the Swiss authorities had done an “odd thing” by putting Credit Suisse’s shareholders before some of its bondholders in the rescue of the lender. – The Times

US close

Stocks closed above the waterline on Wall Street on Friday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 0.42% at 32,237.53.

The S&P 500 was ahead 0.56% at 3,970.99, and the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.31% to 11,823.96.