Here are the business stories making the headlines across Scotland and the UK this morning.
St James’s Place to sell £2bn of commercial property
Britain’s biggest wealth manager St James’s Place is in effect abandoning commercial property as an asset class after deciding to wind down three funds with £1.84billion invested in office blocks, shopping centres and other real estate.
The company, which manages investments for one million people in the UK, said the decision was taken after what it called “a challenging period for the sector as a whole”.
Like many asset managers, SJP has been hit by the so-called liquidity mismatch problem — reluctant to sell large, hard-to-divide property assets at what it thinks of as fire sale prices to raise the cash to meet redemption requests.
Read the full story in The Times.
Trump family buys old Coastguard cottages next to Aberdeenshire course
Donald Trump may be returning to one particular house in the US, but his estate team in Aberdeenshire have bought five next to his Balmedie golf course.
The American president elect and businessman and his son Eric has submitted plans to revamp the former Coastguard Cottages at Menie.
Under the proposal, the vacant homes would be renovated with porches added to their front entrances.
Read the full story in the P&J.
Czech billionaire closes in on deal to buy Royal Mail
The sale of Royal Mail to Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky's EP Group is close to being finalised and could be confirmed in the next two weeks, according to sources close to the deal.
Kretinsky has agreed to make extra concessions in order to clinch the takeover, the BBC understands.
Unions have been meeting with Kretinsky’s advisors this week, and while some sources say they remain "wary" of him, the Communication Workers Union (CWU) said meetings with the EP Group have been "constructive".
Prison block underused due to staff shortages
Finding the necessary staffing levels to fully utilise accommodation at HMP Grampian would help ease overcrowding elsewhere in Scotland’s jails, according to prisons inspectors.
The jail at Peterhead, which is capable of housing 500 inmates, opened in 2014, replacing two older prisons, HMP Peterhead and HMP Aberdeen.
But the prison’s Cruden Hall block, which can house up to 78 inmates, was lying empty during an inspection conducted earlier this year.
Click here to read the full story.
Wizz Air executive fined over £4m of trades in airline’s shares
A former executive at Wizz Air has been fined for secretly trading more than £4million worth of shares in the London-listed airline in the run-up to financial results, in the first sanction of its kind by the Financial Conduct Authority.
The City regulator said that Andras Sebok, former chief supply chain officer at Wizz Air, traded company shares when he wasn’t permitted to, and failed to disclose his trades.
It fined him £123,500 after concluding that he “committed the breaches deliberately or recklessly”.
Reddit overtakes X in popularity of social media platforms in UK
Reddit, the American online discussion platform, has overtaken X to become the fifth most popular social media platform in the UK, according to the communications watchdog.
Ofcom said Reddit, where users post on discussion threads within topic-based communities, was visited by 22.9million UK adults in May this year, compared with 22.1million on X.
The figures make Reddit the fastest-growing large social media platform in the UK and represent a growth of 47% on the same period in 2023.