A SEASIDE town in Cumbria that’s won multiple awards is a well-kept holiday secret among travellers in the know, thanks to its unspoiled surroundings and spectacular sunsets.

Silloth in Allerdale, Cumbria, has been known since Victorian times for the quality of its air, the abundance of rare wildlife and its spectacular sunsets. And not much has changed since then.

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It has several beaches, two of the most famous ones being West Beach and Grune Point.

West Beach is a large, sandy beach with dunes and views of the Solway Firth and the Scottish landscape, including the hills of Southern Galloway and the Lake District Fells.

Grune Point is a long, sandy shingle beach that sticks out into the Moricambe estuary and is a great spot for bird watching.

The beaches are some of the best places to watch Silloth’s famous sunsets, which are considered so good because of the town’s location and views.

If you don’t make it to the beach, another popular spot to catch one is Silloth Promenade – a traffic-free walkway which also has views of Solway Firth and Scotland.

The town’s Green is one of the largest and longest greens in the country, dating back to the 1860s.

 It’s located in the Silloth conservation area and close to the Hadrian’s Wall World Heritage Site, and has been awarded the Green Flag Award several years in a row for its high environmental standards, excellent visitor facilities, and beautiful maintenance.

It’s now recognised as one of the best parks in the country.

Among the things to do there is a water play area, which is a big hit during the summer months with children of all ages.

Silloth has won several awards over the years, including the Coastal Resort Trophy and Best Sustainable Development Town in 2016.

The town has also played host to lots of big events. For 21 years it held a music and beer festival, with Allerdale beers and local acts.

But the organises announced this year they’d made the “difficult decision” for it to come to an end.

The Silloth Vintage Rally however, still takes place across two days every year.

It’s a free, family-friendly event that takes place on Silloth Green, showcasing hundreds of vintage vehicles, including steam engines, stationary engines, commercial and military vehicles, classic cars, vintage tractors, and classic motorbikes.

If you can’t wait for the rally to come around, Silloth has its very own Motorcycle Museum.

The museum displays a range of production and Grand Prix bikes that have been raced by Jim Snaith at iconic circuits including the Isle of Man TT and Daytona. 

The museum is run by Snaith, and he shares his first-hand knowledge with visitors. 

Entry is free and donations are welcome.

Silloth’s location is also ideal for exploring the Lake District.

Drive around 45 minutes south east and you’ll find yourself in Keswick.

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The UK’s best seaside town was revealed in July this year by Which?

Banburgh in Northumberland topped the list, making it four years in a row that the north east town has claimed the title.

Former central banker Mark Carney has warned there will be “significant stranded assets” in commercial real estate as governments push to reach net zero, highlighting the risks to property owners and lenders from older buildings that cannot adapt.

Property investors are facing a double whammy from the sharp fall in asset values caused by higher interest rates, and increasingly urgent demands to invest in energy efficiency.

Stranded assets are often associated with fossil fuels that will be phased out through the green transition, but Carney underscored that there are also older buildings that “aren’t going to make it” as countries regulate to cut greenhouse gas emissions across all sectors.

“There will be a tail of stranded assets . . . which are going to have to turn over and be refurbished if possible or knocked down and repurposed,” he said.

European real estate investors need to increase their annual capital spending by 30 per cent to get on top of upgrading buildings, according to a report this week by investment manager AEW. It found that the energy performance of European buildings was significantly behind the progress needed under the Paris agreement, where countries across the world agreed to limit the global temperature rises.

At the COP28 climate conference in Dubai last year, countries agreed to double the rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030.

But in some cases, such as older, poorly located office buildings, the upfront cost may be uneconomic due to a lack of demand or low rents for the space.

Trying to knock down buildings that are deemed obsolete — such as the Marks and Spencer Oxford Street flagship or the former Museum of London — can also cause controversy, since preserving existing structures saves carbon from building materials such as steel and concrete.

Operating buildings account for 26 per cent of global energy-related emissions, according to the International Energy Agency, which has warned that faster progress is needed to put the property sector on track to net zero by 2050.

Commercial buildings in the UK face a tough series of deadlines to upgrade their energy efficiency ratings by 2030. About 12 per cent of commercial properties missed an energy rating deadline last year, according to the Centre for Cities.

Carney warned investors about banking on these deadlines slipping. “There will be people . . . who either implicitly or explicitly think that these timelines are going to shift, or that somehow or another it is not going to become a binding constraint. But that is a big risk to take,” he said.

Carney, who is chair of Brookfield Asset Management, was speaking in London for the opening of Eden Dock, a new waterside garden at Canary Wharf, which is co-owned by the Canadian asset manager. He said adding biodiversity to urban settings was another key challenge for landlords, alongside reducing emissions.

Dutch bank ING last month warned 2,000 of its biggest clients, including commercial real estate developers and owners, that it would stop providing them with financing if they failed to make sufficient progress on tackling their climate impacts. It found that commercial real estate was a laggard compared with other sectors when it came to disclosing climate impacts.

But despite climate risks for the sector, Carney said he was not concerned about risks to financial stability from the property sector.

“I am very sanguine about commercial real estate risks in the financial sector as a whole, because the risk is more broadly spread, there is less liquidity pressures than would have come in a bank-based commercial real estate sector,” he said. “And I think that the work out process is proceeding for those assets that need to be worked out.”

Standard Life has partnered with Raindrop and launched a free-to-all pension-finding tool to help Britons track down their missing pensions.

This comes as Standard Life research has shown that 19% of people with multiple pensions believe they have lost track of at least one pension pot.

Standard Life, part of Phoenix Group, said that despite the benefits of consolidating pensions, such as a greater ability to track performance and boost understanding of how much is being saved for the future, 73% of those with more than one workplace pension said they have not consolidated.

Just under a third (32%) are unsure of how to start consolidating and 12% find the process too difficult.

It has been estimated that 2.8 million pension pots in the UK, valued at over £26.6bn, remain unclaimed. Additionally, the average person has at least 11 employers in their working lifetime.

In order to find a lost pension, a user just needs to provide their former employer’s name and the time period they worked for the company. This is in contrast to supplying details of the pension provider “as is often the case when consolidating pension pots”.

Raindrop’s technology then begins the tracing process, which on average takes just 4-6 weeks. During this time, a dedicated case manager is on-hand to provide updates on the process.

Once a person’s lost pensions have been traced, they will be better informed about their income prospects and able to take the necessary steps to prepare for their retirement.

Standard Life managing director of retail direct Dean Butler said: “We know that people who actively plan for their retirement are more confident and financially secure but if you don’t know where all your savings are, you can’t begin to calculate their value, making planning unnecessarily difficult.

“Sometimes people have a vague idea of having a pension with a previous employer, but just don’t know how to go about finding it. Our new pension-finding service removes the major hurdles that people face and allows them to regain control of their pensions savings. We want to help them trace any missing pensions, so they don’t ever lose them again and are better prepared to organise their retirement savings.”

Raindrop co-founder Vivan Shridharani added: “Millions of UK savers have lost pensions, often unsure of how to begin their search. As each new generation has more jobs than the last, the number of lost pensions continues to grow. We’re committed to helping savers, with a simple solution to easily find their lost pensions and help them better prepare for their financial future.

“By partnering with Standard Life, one of the UK’s largest pensions providers, we hope to empower savers to locate lost pots and take control of their long-term financial planning.”

Since the launch of Raindrop, a pension-finding platform, in 2021, it has located over £325m in lost pension savings across more than 27,000 pots.

In order to obtain these results, Standard Life commissioned Opinium to conduct research among 2,000 UK adults between 6 and 10 September 2024.

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Star corporate raider Carl Icahn has offered his longtime chief financial officer, Ted Papapostolou, a juicy new contract extension to 2028. But it comes with some onerous strings attached.

There’s no doubt Papapostolou deserves a payday, having spent a lot of time extinguishing fires recently. First came last year’s short attack by Hindenburg Research, which sent the shares of Icahn Enterprises LP (IEP) tumbling. More recently, Papapostolou had to settle SEC charges over pledging company securities as collateral for personal loans.

So, Icahn is paying up. He’s granted Papapostolou a $2.2mn salary package, plus an incentive-based package worth up to $17mn that rewards him if IEP recovers some of its value. Unfortunately for us, Papapostolou has offered his omertà in exchange. 

According to the offer letter (FTAV’s emphasis below):

You further agree not to write a book or article about the Designated Entities, Mr. Icahn, his family members, or any of the respective affiliates of any of the foregoing, in any media and not to publish or cause to be published in any media, any Confidential Information, and further agree to keep confidential and not to disclose to any third party, including, but not limited to, newspapers, authors, publicists, journalists, bloggers, gossip columnists, producers, directors, script writers, media personalities, and the like, in any and all media or communication methods, any Confidential Information.

It’s a shame Papapostolou is barred from sharing the internal workings of Icahn’s empire with gossip columnists, authors and publicists. Even his friends and family seemingly won’t hear a peep, except the fact that, yes, he once served as chief financial officer of IEP. 

In furtherance of the foregoing, you agree that following the cessation of your employment hereunder, the sole and only statements you will make about or concerning any or all of: Mr. Icahn, his family members, and the Designated Entities . . . is to acknowledge that you are or were employed by the Company, and were its Chief Financial Officer.

But seems Papapostolou missed out on some of the more restrictive provisions affecting Icahn employees, like onetime chief financial officer of Icahn-owned refinery CVR Energy, Tracy Jackson. She agreed to keep the terms of the 2021 separation between herself, a spouse and a tax attorney (and a government agency, in the event of a subpoena). 

We’d also love to know what Aris Kekedjian, a former General Electric executive who worked as IEP’s chief executive for just seven months before resigning, has to say. The same goes for David Willetts, who moved over to run Icahn-owned car mechanic Pep Boys after a brief stint at the top (his stint at Pep Boys proved equally brief, with the company announcing last week that Willetts has already left). 

The circle running IEP is small, with under 50 employees at the Sunny Isles Beach, Florida-based conglomerate according to LinkedIn. 

Hopefully a few escape the no-book no-blog agreement so a lucky reporter can package the tale of IEP into a warts-and-all bestseller, rather than a bland, hagiographic HBO series.

Further reading:

– Icahn seen clearly now the gains have gone (FTAV)