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With more investment bankers losing their jobs every day, high-end London property is not the most obvious investment, but if you are backing commodities and emerging market growth, a flat in a swanky part of the city might not be such a bad bet.
"Mayfair real estate is an emerging market asset class," said Renaissance Capital deputy chief executive Andrew Cornthwaite, who got the idea from an investor deciding what to do with $1 billion (633 million pounds) made selling emerging market assets.
"I asked him what he was buying now," Cornthwaite told the Reuters Russia Investment Summit. "He said: 'I am buying coal in Mozambique, I am buying oil in Kurdistan, and I am buying buildings in Mayfair'."
"I thought it must be a hedge, but the point is it is the same dynamic. You dig things out of the ground, people get rich, and they want to have a place in London."
Evidence suggests the top end of London's real estate market is holding up well, according to Knight Frank, global estate agent to the wealthy, in its 2011 property report.
And there is no doubt you will cross plenty of Chinese, Russians, and others from emerging markets in a stroll around well-heeled districts such as Mayfair or in the more select reaches of the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea.
"The factors that encourage the wealthy to seek out and buy the very best property in cities such as London have, if anything, become even more important," Knight Frank said in its report.
"In the midst of this tumult, the resilience shown by the world's most exclusive residential property destinations remains constant."
(Reuters) -By Andrew Callus
MOSCOW | Thu Sep 15, 2011 11:23am BST
