Alice and Dan discuss plans to convert a Georgian Quarter pub into a hotel, turnover figures at the UK's biggest airports, and an acclaimed Indian restaurant group opening a site in Leeds.
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00:00Plans to convert a pub into a hotel, a new disroom in New Yorkshire and the UK's biggest
00:06airports ranked by turnover all feature in today's business briefing.
00:15Morning Alice. Morning Dan. So what's caught your eye today? Well plans to convert a pub in
00:21Liverpool's Georgian Quarter which actually closed permanently earlier this month have been submitted
00:27to Liverpool City Council's planning portal. So the site is called The Caledonia, it's in the
00:33Cannon Street Conservation Area. Have you been there before? I've been around there, it's a nice area.
00:38Yeah it sounds actually like the pub is somewhere you would have really liked, it's kind of known for
00:42its live music and community events and for the past 15 years it's been headed by Laura King and
00:50she announced earlier this month on Facebook that the venue would be closing for good and she cited
00:56issues such as the cost of living crisis which she said is crippling community venues and she
01:02actually said that we're not the first to go but without change we won't be the last which is
01:07quite a profound statement. But now plans have come forward to bring the building back to life I
01:14suppose even though it's not been vacant for very long and under the plans a two-star extension would
01:20be built from the first floor enabling the property to have 12 hotel rooms now this would include two
01:27rooms on the ground floor and five on each of the first and second floors there is also a basement
01:33floor but that would be left as it is so that proposal has just been submitted this week so Liverpool's
01:40planners will look at that in due course and hopefully that gets back so you know the building doesn't
01:45sit vacant. Sad that the venue had no choice but to close but sounds like exciting plans for the
01:50regeneration of the site. Anyway moving up away from the north into the south our annual corporate
01:57finance guide is landing in the next edition of the South East Business Insider and we've been looking at
02:02some of the key data from the financial services industry so the research from Experian MIQ shows that
02:08acquisition deals are still the most popular across the South East and that's been driven by
02:12factors like increased business confidence economic stability and the desire to expand market share
02:18and access new technology specifically AI is playing a bigger role in shaping those deals.
02:22Yeah that makes sense. So Nick Wallace from Gerald Edelman our South East deal maker of the year
02:27said that the appetite for acquisitions is growing across the UK and that the South East is leading the way
02:33cross-border deals have jumped from 37 to 47 percent between the first quarter of last year to this year
02:38due to growing overseas interest especially with economic uncertainty in the US and even busier second
02:44half of this year is expected. That's good. So acquisitions led the way with a total value of £12
02:49billion, followed by divestants at nearly £7 billion and investor vials at just under £1.9 billion
02:56pounds and you can see the full breakdown of that list in the magazine in the next edition. Yeah sounds
03:01interesting. Yeah but moving away from that you've got a story of a new restaurant. We do saw an Indian
03:07restaurant chain Dishoom has revealed plans to open a site in Leeds. Have you been to Dishoom? I've heard
03:14good things. It's it's so nice it's really beautiful inside as well and so the company is going to take
03:19over the former flannels unit on Vicar Lane and the space spans about 8,000 square feet across two
03:26floors so it's quite big but I think I've only been to the Manchester Dishoom but that one is also pretty
03:31big inside and and it's being brought forward through a deal with development company Town Centre
03:37Securities which actually owns the site and they're going to transform it to align with Dishoom's
03:42design style and storytelling approach. Now each venue kind of draws on different elements of Bombay's
03:49history so really exciting for meads and the foodies there. I might have to to try it out sometime. You definitely
03:56should. Yeah just to finish off here I'm going to be looking at UK airports. We've ranked the biggest
04:02UA, sorry the biggest airports in the UK based on their turnover so do you want to guess which airports
04:09might have made up the top three? I would assume just the London ones like Gatwick, Heathrow, Stansted maybe or
04:17Manchester? Manchester is the is the other airport. Is it? Yeah and the other ones are London so Heathrow
04:23topped the list as the largest airport in the UK bringing in £3.6 billion worth of turnover in 2024
04:29and serving a record 83.9 million passengers so they're preparing for a major investment over the
04:35next decade including their plans for a third runway which we've covered extensively and the proposals
04:40for that are expected to be submitted this summer and second place is London Gatwick which reported
04:46£1.1 billion worth of revenue in 2024. They are also continuing to finalise plans for the Northern
04:51runway and Manchester airport is in third with £511 million in turnover for 2324 followed by London
04:59Stansted, Birmingham airport and Glasgow airport but instead of me going through the whole list there's
05:03quite a lot of airports in the UK you can read the full list on our website where you can also read
05:07more about the other stories we've discussed today subscribe to our magazine and find out about upcoming events