One and Two Fusion Point has been acquired in a multi-million-pound deal

Two prime office buildings in Cardiff are under new ownership following a multi-million-pound deal. The Fusion Point One and Two buildings on Dumballs Road have been acquired by an undisclosed overseas investor after being put up for sale by Fidelity UK Real Fund.

Newmark UK acted for the acquirer, with the Cardiff office of Knight Frank acting for Fidelity.

The freehold in both properties were marketed separately, but with Fidelity’s preference being for them to be sold together to one investor. Fusion One had been marketed with a guide price in access of £10.8m and Fusion Two in access of £6.3m. The value of the deal has not been disclosed, but is understood to have been below the combined guide prices.

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John Shaffer, capital markets, Newmark UK said: “Despite the global market uncertainty, we continue to see activity from overseas capital, attracted by the strong returns UK regional offices offer.”

Fusion Point One, whose tenants include the International Baccalaureate Organisation (IBO) and American streaming giant Roku UK, provides 63,500 sq ft of office space. It generates a current annual rental income of £1.16m. On letting its vacant space, around a fifth of the building, it is expected to achieve a rental income of £1.53m.

The IBO relocated to the refurbished building last year, taking 25,000 sq ft of space. It relocated from its longstanding office at Cardiff Gate Business Park on the outskirts of the capital.

Fusion Two, which provides 59,578 sq ft of office space, is currently occupied by professional advisory firm Deloitte. The building, whose first floor is vacant, currently generates a rental annual income of £881,128.

Knight Frank and Fletcher Morgan has been retained as marketing agents with strong interest in the vacant space in both buildings.

Last week the 135,000 sq ft office led Hodge House office scheme in the centre of Cardiff also came under new ownership. Financial services giant Legal & General put its investment in the listed building up for sale last November with a £34.1m asking price. The sales process, overseen by the Knight Frank, attracted strong interest before a deal was concluded with London-based real estate, development and asset management start-up SevenCitiesLdn.

The value of the deal has not been disclosed but is understood to have been close to the asking price. The Cardiff office of Savills acted for SevenCitiesLdn, which launched last year with backing from property development and investment group SevenCapital.

The acquisition is the first for SevenCitiesLdn which is looking to drive deal flow for added value commercial property assets.

Britain’s labour market is bracing for its sharpest contraction in years, with more than 160,000 roles forecast to vanish over the course of 2026 as anaemic growth and stubbornly high energy bills combine to squeeze employers across the country’s industrial heartlands.

The grim assessment comes from the Item Club, the independent forecaster that runs its projections through the very same economic model used by the Treasury to stress-test government policy. According to its latest analysis, a net 163,000 jobs will disappear this year, representing a 0.4 per cent decline in total employment and dealing a fresh blow to a workforce already feeling the strain of 18 months of cooling demand.

For Britain’s small and medium-sized employers, the report makes for sobering reading. The pain, the Item Club warns, will fall disproportionately on energy-intensive manufacturers, the construction trade and the high street, three sectors that between them prop up tens of thousands of SMEs and the supply chains that orbit them. As disposable incomes are eroded, consumer-facing businesses in retail, hospitality and food service are expected to feel a secondary shockwave.

“The hit will be felt in lower-income regions where consumers typically have less rainy-day savings, which will reduce spending in the retail and hospitality sectors,” said Tim Lyne, an adviser to the Item Club, in a candid assessment of how the downturn will play out beyond the M25.

The geographical pattern of the squeeze will be uneven and, in places, severe. Birmingham’s unemployment rate is forecast to climb from 6.7 per cent to 7.8 per cent over the year, while Glasgow is on course to break through the 5 per cent mark from a 4.3 per cent average in 2025. Cambridge stands as the lone exception among Britain’s major cities, with overall employment expected to edge modestly higher on the back of its knowledge-economy base.

Nationally, the jobless rate, which brushed 5 per cent at the close of last year, is heading for 5.1 per cent in the coming months, up from 4.9 per cent in the most recent official figures published by the Bank of England.

Official growth data due this week is expected to confirm that the economy expanded by around 0.3 per cent in the first quarter of 2026, a modest improvement on the 0.1 per cent recorded in the final three months of 2025, but hardly the kind of momentum that creates jobs at scale.

A separate survey from KPMG and the Recruitment and Employment Confederation lends weight to the gloomier outlook. Permanent placements across the economy fell in April at their fastest rate since the start of the year, while demand for temporary staff climbed to its highest level since 2023, as employers hedged their bets on hiring commitments.

Neil Carberry, chief executive of the REC, said the trend reflected a “preference for short-term staff at some firms who wanted to push ahead with business development and expansion plans” against an uncertain backdrop. “Businesses will be particularly concerned about the impact on inflation, their borrowing costs and any disruption to wider supply chains,” he added, alluding to the lingering aftershocks of the conflict in Iran.

For business owners, the message is one many will recognise from the past two years: keep options open, keep headcount flexible, and assume that the cost of capital will remain elevated for longer than is comfortable.

The Item Club expects the only meaningful employment growth this year to come from publicly funded corners of the economy, education, health and social care, but its analysts are blunt that this expansion is “unlikely to offset losses in larger, more demand-sensitive sectors”. In short: the state will hire, but it will not hire enough.

For SMEs, the most worrying signal in the report is the speed at which higher interest rates and elevated inflation feed through to recruitment freezes and redundancies. With wage settlements still running ahead of productivity gains, and with energy contracts due for renewal across thousands of mid-sized industrial businesses this summer, the path of least resistance for many owner-managers will be to thin payrolls rather than expand them.

One silver lining is the gradual improvement in economic inactivity rates, as more people who left the workforce during and after the pandemic are now returning to look for work. But with vacancies falling and the labour market loosening, that fresh supply of jobseekers may find conditions tougher than they were even a year ago.

The Item Club’s projections, drawn from the Treasury’s own model, are typically used by policymakers to scrutinise the government’s claims about its economic agenda. On this occasion, they offer ministers little political cover and Britain’s job creators even less.

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Shares of JSW Energy plunged as much as 8% to their day’s low of Rs 512 on the BSE on Tuesday after it reported a consolidated net profit of Rs 574 crore for the March quarter, marking a 38% increase from Rs 414 crore recorded in the same period last year.

Revenue from operations rose sharply by 41% year-on-year to Rs 4,499 crore in Q4FY26, compared with Rs 3,189 crore in the corresponding quarter of the previous financial year. The company’s board has recommended a dividend of Rs 2 per equity share and fixed Friday, June 5, as the record date to identify shareholders eligible for the payout.

On a sequential basis, profit after tax grew 8% from Rs 529 crore reported in Q3FY26, while revenue increased 10% quarter-on-quarter from Rs 4,082 crore in the October-December quarter.

Total expenses during the quarter stood at Rs 4,666 crore, higher than Rs 4,366 crore in Q3FY26 and Rs 3,142 crore in Q4FY25. This reflects a rise of 7% sequentially and 48% on a yearly basis. The increase in expenditure was driven by higher fuel costs, employee expenses and finance costs, among other factors.

Power sales volume climbed 48% year-on-year to 11.7 billion units (BUs) from 7.9 BUs. Renewable energy generation rose 68% to 2.9 BUs from 1.7 BUs a year ago, while thermal generation increased 43% to 8.8 BUs from 6.2 BUs.

Generation under long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) grew 25% year-on-year to 8.6 BUs from 6.9 BUs. Short-term PPA generation surged 201% to 3.1 BUs, compared with 1.0 BU in the year-ago period.
JSW Energy’s cash and cash equivalents stood at Rs 10,013 crore during the quarter, reflecting a strong liquidity position. The company reported a net debt-to-equity ratio of 2.1x, while operational net debt-to-EBITDA stood at 5.2x.EBITDA for Q4FY26 jumped 72% year-on-year to Rs 2,602 crore from Rs 1,512 crore reported in the corresponding quarter last year.

JSW Energy shares are up 9.5% in the last 1 month and about 15% in the last 1 year.

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