German industrial orders unexpectedly rise in April
Orders rose by 0.6% on the previous month on a seasonally and calendar-adjusted basis. A Reuters poll of analysts had pointed to a fall of 1.0%.
The less volatile three-month on three-month comparison showed that new orders in the period from February to April were 0.5% higher than in the previous three months.
The statistics office also revised the data for March to a 3.4% increase on the month, instead of the previous 3.6%.
Foreign orders fell by 0.3% on the month, with new orders from the euro zone increasing by 0.5% and new orders from outside the euro zone declining by 0.9%. Domestic orders rose by 2.2% on the month, the statistics office said.
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Britain has become the most attractive place to invest in the world after Sir Keir Starmer struck a trade deal with Donald Trump. A survey of the finance chiefs of some of Britain's biggest listed businesses found that the UK was now their preferred country to invest in, overtaking the US, Japan and the Middle East. The UK has leapt up the rankings since the end of last year, when it came in at sixth spot. Deloitte, which conducted the survey, said the boost was 'in the light of the UK-US trade deal announced in early May.' Conflict in the Middle East has also weakened that region's relative appeal as a destination for investment. Ian Stewart, chief economist at Deloitte UK, said: 'Despite conflict in the Middle East and volatility in oil prices, levels of concern about geopolitical risk fell slightly in the second quarter. This may reflect an easing of concerns around trade in the light of the UK-US trade deal announced in early May.' It comes as the world braces for the return of US tariffs on trading partners when a 90-day pause on Mr Trump's 'liberation day' levies expires this Wednesday. The president said be would notifying about a dozen countries on Monday of the new tariff level on their shipments to the US. Treasury secretary Scott Bessent said on Sunday that the new tariffs would take effect from August 1. He said several trade deals were close to completion. 'We're going to be very busy over the next 72 hours, ' Mr Bessent said Sunday on CNN's State of the Union. 'If you don't move things along, then on Aug 1, you will boomerang back to your April 2 tariff level.' In the latest Deloitte survey, a net 13pc of UK finance chiefs described Britain as very or somewhat attractive for investment. Only India ranked as highly, with the two countries sharing the top position. Meanwhile, more finance bosses said they were open to expanding, with 17pc saying now was a good time to take risks. The survey covered finance chiefs for both public and private businesses, including FTSE 100 companies. While they are UK-based, a majority of the companies surveyed have international operations. Richard Houston, chief executive of Deloitte UK, said: 'This renewed confidence, coupled with a rise in risk appetite, is welcome and underscores the considerable investment potential the UK offers.' Britain was the first country to secure a trade pact with the US in May. Mr Trump at the time hailed the UK as 'truly one of our great allies' and said it was a 'great honour' to have Britain sign the first deal with the United States. Under the terms of the agreement, the Prime Minister secured lower tariffs on UK car imports into the US, while the aerospace sector was shielded from levies. The Government called it a 'landmark' deal that would save thousands of jobs and make it easier for British companies to do business across the Atlantic. The findings will be a welcome boost for the Government, which has been battling to convince companies to invest in Britain. Last year, foreign investment into Britain plunged to a record low. Official figures showed the number of inbound foreign direct investment (FDI) projects dropped to 1,375 last year, down 12pc from the 1,555 in 2023-24. Deloitte's positive findings also come after a torrid week for Labour that has seen Sir Keir's authority significantly weakened by a rebellion on cuts to welfare spending. Ms Reeves said: 'Finance leaders see the UK as the best place in the world to invest. Under this Government we are open for business, delivering more investment, more jobs and putting more money in people's pockets across Britain.'
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In 2023, $1.7tn of global real estate was managed by institutional investors such as private equity firms, insurance companies, hedge funds, banks and pension funds, up from $385bn in 2008. Spurred by loose monetary policy, these actors consider Europe's housing a particularly lucrative and secure 'asset class'. Purchases of residential property in the euro area by institutional investors tripled over the past decade. As a London-based asset manager puts it: 'Real estate investors with exposure to European residential assets are the cats that got the cream,' with housing generating 'stronger risk-adjusted returns than any other sector'. The scale of institutional ownership in certain places is staggering. In Ireland, nearly half of all units delivered since 2017 were purchased by investment funds. Across Sweden, the share of private rental apartments with institutional investors as landlords has swelled to 24%. In Berlin, €40bn of housing assets are now in institutional portfolios, 10% of the total housing stock. In the four largest Dutch cities, a quarter of homes for sale in recent years were purchased by investors. Even in Vienna, a city widely heralded for its vast, subsidised housing stock, institutional players are now invested in every 10th housing unit and 42% of new private rental homes. Not all investors are the same. But when the aim is to make money from housing it can mean only one thing: prices go up. As Leilani Farha, a former UN special rapporteur, points out, investment funds have a 'fiduciary duty' to maximise returns to shareholders, which often include the pension funds on which ordinary people rely. They therefore do all they can to increase prices and reduce expenditure, including via 'renoviction' (using refurbishment as an excuse to hike rents), under-maintenance and the introduction of punitive fees. When the private equity giant Blackstone acquired and renovated homes across Stockholm, it increased rents on some of the homes by up to 50%, the economic geographer Brett Christophers found. 'Green' retrofits in the name of sustainability are also an increasingly common tactic. The corporate capture of our homes has not sprung out of thin air. Decades of housing market privatisation, liberalisation and speculation have enabled the financial sector to tighten its grip on European households. From the 1980s in places such as Italy, Sweden and Germany, government-owned apartments were transferred en masse to the private market. In Berlin, for example, vast bundles of public housing were sold overnight to large corporations. In one single transaction, Deutsche Wohnen purchased 60,000 flats from the city in 2006 for €450m; just €7,500 per apartment. With the role of welfare states in housing provision dismantled, many countries reached for demand-side interventions such as liberalising mortgage credit. This fuelled widespread speculation, pushed up house prices and encouraged extreme levels of household indebtedness. The resulting financial crisis of 2008 provided fresh opportunities for investors. Countries such as Spain, Greece, Portugal and Ireland became a treasure trove of 'distressed' assets and mortgage debt that could be scooped up at bargain prices. Despite the widespread devastation caused by the crisis, Europe's dependence on the financial sector for housing solutions only intensified in the years that followed. As power has shifted to investors and speculators, and governments have become ever more reliant on them, so it has been withdrawn from residents. In order to incentivise or 'de-risk' private investment, governments across Europe have weakened tenant protections, slashed planning regulations and building standards, and offered special subsidies, grants and tax breaks for entities such as real estate investment trusts. One group in particular has borne the brunt of this: renters. Renters have seen their rents skyrocket, living conditions deteriorate and their security undermined. In Europe, some investment funds have directly driven the displacement of lower-income tenants and overseen disruptive evictions. Powerful financial actors have done a great job at framing themselves as the solution to, rather than the cause of, the prevailing crisis. They have incessantly pushed the now-dominant narrative that more real estate investment is a good thing because it will increase the supply of much-needed homes. Blackstone, for example, claims to play a 'positive role in addressing the chronic undersupply of housing across the continent'. But the evidence suggests that greater involvement of financial markets has not increased aggregate home ownership or housing supply, but instead inflated house prices and rents. The thing is, institutional investors aren't really into producing housing. It is directly against their interests to significantly increase supply. As one asset manager concedes, housing undersupply is bad for residents but 'supportive for cashflows'. Blackstone's president famously admitted that 'the big warning signs in real estate are capital and cranes'. In other words, they need shortages to keep prices high. Where corporate capital does produce new homes, they will of course be maximally profitable. Cities such as Manchester, Brussels and Warsaw have experienced a proliferation of high-margins housing products such as micro-apartments, build-to-rent and co-living. Designed with the explicit intention of optimising cashflows, these are both unaffordable and unsuitable for most households. Common Wealth, a thinktank focusing on ownership, found that the private equity-backed build-to-rent sector, which accounts for 30% of new homes in London, caters predominantly to high-earning single people. Families represent just 5% of build-to-rent tenants compared with a quarter of the private rental sector more broadly. These overpriced corporate appendages are a stark reminder of the market's inability to deliver homes that fit the needs and incomes of most people. While housing lies at the heart of political disillusionment today, it is for the same reason becoming a primary trigger for mobilisation across Europe. In October 2024, 150,000 protesters marched through the streets of Madrid demanding action. Some governments, including Denmark and the Netherlands, are introducing policies to deter speculators. But real estate capital continues to hold the power, so it continues to get its way – including by exploiting loopholes, and lobbying against policies that put profits at risk. In 2021, Berliners voted in favour of expropriating and socialising apartments owned by stock-listed landlords. But under pressure from the real estate lobby, politicians have stalled this motion. That same year Blackstone – Spain's largest landlord with 40,000 housing units – opposed plans to impose a 30% target for social housing in institutional portfolios. Struggles against the immense structural power of real-estate interests will be hard fought. In recent decades we have been living through an ever-intensifying social experiment. Can housing, a fundamental need for all human beings, be successfully delivered under the machinations of finance capitalism? The evidence now seems overwhelming: no. As investors have come to dominate, so the power of residents has been systematically undermined. We are left with a crisis of inconceivable proportions. While we can, and should, point the finger at corporate greed, we must remember that this is the system working precisely as it is set up to do. When profit is the prevailing force, housing provision invariably fails to align with social need – to generate the types of homes within the price ranges most desperately required. In the coming years, housing will occupy centre stage in European politics. Now is the time for fundamental structural changes that reclaim homes from the jaws of finance, re-empower residents and reinstate housing as a core priority for public provision. Tim White is a research fellow at Queen Mary University of London and the London School of Economics studying housing, cities and inequality
