The Towing Path

Accomplished IT and business entrepreneur Naveen Jain is best known for owning and managing two companies based in Washington. In 1996, he formed metasearch technology provider InfoSpace and in 2003, he put up Intelius Incorporated, an online information service supplier.

The former Forbes 400 listee currently resides in Washington, particularly in Bellevue. His wife Anu, with whom he has three children, has also taken part in his business ventures as the vice president of the companies’ community relations department.

Earlier, Naveen Jain lived in India, his native country, where he was raised by his father who was a civil engineer. In the 1970s, after graduating from the Indian Institute of Technology (Roorkee) and XLRI (Jamshedpur), he was offered and gladly accepted a business exchange program that let him explore the US information technology market.

Initially residing in New Jersey, he moved to Seattle where he worked under Bill Gates’ Microsoft Corp. There, he was among those who helped develop operating systems Windows 95, Windows NT and MS-DOS. Later on, he was appointed manager, supporting the launch of Microsoft’s online service, MSN.

He later resigned to put up InfoSpace Inc during the dot-com boom. The company was so well known at that time that even Microsoft’s co-establisher Paul Allen was interested in its stock performances. At its peak, the company had a value of $31 billion and Naveen Jain, as its chief executive officer, was worth $2.2 billion. With that, various online properties like AOL (America Online), Lycos, MSN (Microsoft Network) availed of InfoSpace’s services.

At present, he is the chief executive officer as well as the president of Intellius Inc. While the company is enjoying success as among the prominent IT businesses in the industry, its founder takes time to do philanthropy work, giving back to the community that has provided him with so much opportunity. A portion of what he has earned at Intelius benefits various Washington and India-based aid groups that promote education and the youth.

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Fund manager BlackRock is planning to shift to a new office in Drapers Gardens office. The office, which consists of 290,000 sq ft of floor space, is owned by Exemplar Developments and the Canary Wharf Group. BlackRock has taken the lease of the place for 25 years. The first three years are rent free though after that BlackRock will be paying rent at a rate of £49 per square foot. Further, the rent will be reviewed five times in the whole duration of lease for taking in account the market conditions as stated by Songbird, a subsidiary of Canary Wharf Group.

According to Richard Kushel, the Vice chairman of BlackRock, this new office space is perfect for their needs.

The real estate market had been badly impacted by recession in last sometime and the property owners were forced to offer many more years rent free to attract people towards renting their property. Rents had fallen badly and construction was kept on hold in many places. According to the real estate experts, three years is a comparatively smaller period as compared to the offers that have been made in last some time. Thus it seems that the desk space London market is finally moving in a positive direction.

Comparing this lease to other deals made recently, a Cazenove broker said that Nomura had got a six years rent free period for its new London Watermark Place headquarters. Macquarie, an investment bank from Australia, had also tried to get the same office but its offer of four years of free rent and then 24 years lease at the rate of £43 per sq ft was not acceptable to the Landlords.

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SRCList devotes their efforts to providing lead lists that aid financial services sales professionals in exceeding their quarterly sales targets. The Company addresses the needs sales representatives have for superior lists. These lists encompass the names and contact information of clients who recognize their need for financial services. SRCList.com renders lead lists that contain the names of people who can afford a sales professional’s financial services.

SRCList works to stay up-to-date on the needs of Financial Field Sales Reps who require quality contact lists. In the super competitive field of financial services, good sales contact lists are important to building a book of business. These lists must contain the names and contact information of people who understand they may be able to benefit from certain types of financial services products. In addition, these contact lists must contain names of people who can actually afford to spend money on financial services.

In principle, SRCList does the pre-work for the sales rep. They work to guarantee the lead lists they provide are accurate. SRCList.com is also a member of the Direct Marketing Association. They will replace at, no charge, any faulty phone number or address that may make their way onto a contact list they provide. When a client of theirs gets a prospects list, they have exclusive use of the list for six months from the date of delivery.

In addition, SRCList.com offers a guarantee to anyone who choose to use their service. If one of their customers, after contacting the full list furnished, does not earn at least $1,000.00 for every 100 names bought during the first ninety days, SRCList.com will refund, unconditionally, 100 percent of the purchase price. They realize that they must present results that satisfy sales reps who operate within a highly competitive sales environment. For example, a sales rep who desires an Adjustable Mortgage Refinance Prospect List will receive a list where everyone on the file has a minimum 75% loan to value.

SRCList proceeds to provide services that help Insurance, Investment, and Mortgage Field Sales Reps improve their conversion ratios. They understand that having quality sales leads is crucial to financial services sales professionals’ success. SRCList’s commitment is to always providing lead lists that contain the names of those who can afford, and have an tendency towards buying financial services products.

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Central London is once more a coveted location for businesses if the growing interest in office spaces here is any indication. The improvement in rental markets come after a two- year wait during which tenancy deals dried up due to the economy that was badly hit by the recession.

Prices continue to go up for real estate in the UK, mainly in areas like Central London and West End (click desk space London for info), which are prime business districts. Experts are however predicting that this may come to a halt soon if interest rates are hiked. With banks selling properties to get much needed liquidity and with foreign interest in the UK real estate, prices are improving now.

As rental rates begin to even out in central London at about £43 per sq ft and at £75 per sq ft in West End, developers are looking at investing in projects once more to make the most of good demand for grade A spaces.

While sale prices may stagnate with interest hike, the same is not expected to happen to rentals. During recession, a number of developments were halted, leading to a shortage in good office spaces now. This has led to a race for offices among tenants, with many even willing to pay higher rents than were prevalent just a few months ago. The scramble has alderfly started at the fag end of 2009, seeing a total of 2.6 m sq ft of space rented out.

This is the first time sine 2007 that such huge spaces have been taken up for tenancy. As projects under construction are still 41% lower than those a year ago, the market is still likely to be high on demand and low on supply for a while. This will mean that higher rents can prevail for now, until the two balance each other.

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Search Office Space (SOS) has shifted its office from 18 Hanover Square near the Bond Street Crossrail tube station to Berkeley Square House situated in London’s Mayfair district. The recent shift has been prompted by increase in business prospects in the serviced office sector. Increase in business has led to the growth of the company, and the company has now started to operate globally.

The high profile business district of Central London to which SOS has shifted will help the company in diversifying it business by dealing with business clients, corporate centres, development firms, and commercial property dealers across London and throughout the UK.

According to Richard Smith, founder and managing director of SOS, the company’s earlier location at 18 Hanover Square was good for its business. However, the recent shifting will enable the company to operate from the most prestigious business district in London, and this will be beneficial for the company, believes Smith.

Berkeley Square is a strategic location for business, as it is flanked by classy restaurants, shopping malls, hotels and business centres. Many international offices are located here, making the business location a desirable place for establishing new businessess looking for a new rent desk option.

Currently SOS, which has been running its business for more than fifteen years, has a global presence with offices in Hong Kong and the US, besides London and Auckland. Specializing in office space to rent, let and lease, the company also conducts online business and has an online presence in about 75 nations.

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Recent reports state that Rockspring Property Investment Managers LLP Company has acquired two major London commercial properties on behalf of its partnership NPS Central London Property Limited partnership. Both the deals are meant to be a part of the investment mandate of the company on behalf of the national pension service of Korea.

The first property acquired by Rockspring is on 88 Wood Street, London EC2 and measures about 247,000 Sq ft spanning over 17 floors that are leased out to big companies like Hewlett Packard Ltd, Bryan Cave, National Australia Bank, Mitsubishi and Collins Stewart Ltd. The property was purchased by Rockspring for a whopping £184m from ING Real Estate investment. Most of the leases on this property are for more than ten years and the annual income in rents obtained from this property amount to nearly £13m. Moreover, Rockspring in this deal has also worked out an arrangement with Bayern LB for its debt facility amounting to nearly £91m.

The second property acquired by Rockspring is 40 Grosvenor Place, London SWI, which is situated at Victoria and is centrally located for desk space London. Rockspring has purchased only 50% of the rights in this property and the remaining 50 per cent is with the Grosvenor London Office Fund. The property purchased by Rockspring covers six floors of the property and houses the offices of leading and notable companies like Bluecrest, EDF Energy, LEK Consulting and Capital International. The rents accruing from this property annually amount to £12m.

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Commercial property seems to be gaining favour once more among office establishments as the effects of severe recession slightly ease up. Office space is becoming more attractive to those looking for new premises for business.

This feedback comes from property owners located in and around the city of London. Vacant spaces in offices to rent in London are beginning to get leased again after a hiatus during the downward spiralling economy stalled any movement in the market. Surveyors report that the amount of commercially suitable space lying unused is reducing at long last after a two year gap. This development serves to underline the slowly improving economical conditions. There was a decrease of 1.5 million square feet in the total available office space between March and September this year.

However, it is to be noted that the total office space available has also gone down owing to a drastic decrease in the construction of new premises. Activity has stopped here because of the tight finances of developers and unavailability of funding for new projects.

The crunch in the commercial space market has been so bad that landlords have resorted to offering cash for business specific moderations within the premises. For long term leases, landlords have been ready to offer bonuses in the form of rent free years. Mr Smith of NB Real Estate, states that only recently have landlords started getting stricter about the terms of rental/ lease agreements. Although the market is still not as buoyant as they would like, the pressure of making good in the succeeding 12 month period has had this effect. They seem to be working on the principle that low rent is still better than no rent at all.

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Lacking a wonderful design for your flyers, flyer printing may throw away valued marketing dollars. Follow these quick and easy flyer printing design tips to ensure your flyers receive a positive response and not a harmful one. Remember - your flyers speak for you when you can’t be there!1. The first tip out of the flyer printing design tips is to keep things regular and efficient. Complex designs, busy imagery and crammed content may look terrific but you need clients to take one look at your flyer and know exactly what it’s all about. Keep the design uncomplicated and kind and ensure the reader can clearly see what it’s in relation to. You need to be able to get the message across to everyone, counting those people who take the flyer and put it in the bin later on.2. Double check your copy before sending the design off for flyer printing. Spelling errors, grammatical errors, punctuation mistakes and other content errors can have a negative impact. If a potential customer reads a flyer with an error in it, all they will see is the error and not what the flyer is about. It can also have the negative effect of reflecting poorly on the proficiency of your business.3. Be sure you check with the flyer printing company how much bleed they need. Bleed is essential for ensuring print jobs don’t come back with part of the flyer cut off leaving a white gap or missing text. Make sure you have enough bleed around the design of your flyer to avoid this.4. Make sure your design accurately relates to the right clientele. If you are targeting parents with young children it’s no good designing flyers that satisfy to the elderly, if you are targeting Teenagers, make sure the flyer will speak to them. The design has to indicate the clients you are targeting with your flyer printing in order to be thriving.

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Sheffield Chamber of Commerce has launched a new scheme through the Property Assist Programme, which is focussed on supporting young members of the Chamber in starting their new businesses.

Paul Reeves, the present Director of Business Development for the Chamber, said that the scheme has been made possible because of the impressive property database that the Chamber has been able to create. He however stressed that the database needed further expansion so that more and more members could be helped through such schemes.

The scheme involves leasing out of office space in two locations, the new Omnia One and the Quadrant, which are not only easily accessible because of their strategic location in Sheffield City Centre, but also claim to provide all the important services that a budding business could seek.

The two locations offer good meeting room and conferencing facilities. They have impressive hot desking and telephone answering services and have all the necessary security measures in place. If hot desking is of particular interest, then click on Desk Space Genie, a fairly new site with loads of desk space and office space rental places.

In words of Seb Brown, Omnia manager, they are the best choice for any new entrepreneur looking for a quality office and good facilities. The location of the offices is excellent and given the all round good quality, by going with this option, the entrepreneurs would save a lot of time, which they would have otherwise spent in looking for offices.

The scheme is all set to draw the attention of young entrepreneurs, who are looking forward to launching their businesses. The adaptable leases are expected to attract a large number of entrepreneurs.

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Every major city in the country is now trying to find ways to entice foreign business to relocate into its empty office spaces. The unfortunate fact is that during the boom years when building was an epidemic resulting in too many large residential houses and a glut of expensive office blocks.

The price is now being paid as people live in houses that they can’t afford to sell and office rental rates are at almost giveaway prices. Whatever the cause of the problem a solution must be found. With over half a million square feet of offices vacant the situation could get much worse before the recession recedes. One glimmer in the office rental market however has been a rise in those workers, specifically freelance workers and small businesses wanting to rent a desk. This new phenomenon has seen a surge in the demand for desk space rental.

Some companies, like the Maersk Group have utilised the weak pound and lowering of the cost of living to move into this great sea faring port. But Liverpool will have to work hard to make sure others will follow because there only a limited amount of ship-owning companies out there.

Even those offices that have long term occupants need to be wary that other European cities do not tempt them away by offering lucrative packages and ever more attractive benefits. This is a global market place and everyone must up their game to compete and succeed.

Liverpool, the home of the fab four has seen a lot of investment poured into it in recent years and it is now a vibrant modern city. The challenge ahead lies in holding steady and to hope that a decline does not take hold, only time will tell.

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