Share values of property services firms tumble over fears of AI disruption
Shares in commercial property services companies have tumbled, in the latest sell-off driven by fears over disruption from artificial intelligence.After steep declines on Wall Street, European stocks in the sector were hit on Thursday.The estate agent Savills’ shares fell 7.5% in London, while the serviced office provider International Workplace Group, which owns the Regus brand, lost 9%.The UK’s two biggest property developers, British Land and Landsec, dropped 2.
6% and 2.4% respectively.On Wall Street, property service firms fell for a second consecutive day.CBRE shares plunged 12.5%, Jones Lang LaSalle lost nearly 11% and Cushman & Wakefield fell 9.
1%, after even sharper declines on Wednesday.Commercial property stocks have become the latest sector to be hammered by fears over the impact of rapid advances in AI, as the sell-off spread from legal software, publishing, analytics and data companies last week to insurance firms, price comparison sites and wealth managers this week.The share declines were sparked by AI firms such as Anthropic, the company behind the chatbot Claude, releasing new tools, although there was limited news on Thursday, leading analysts to argue that the sell-off was overdone.AI has the potential to automate a wide range of office-based tasks and could lead to swathes of job losses.There are also concerns among investors that demand for offices could fall, in a blow to property companies.
Jade Rahmani, commercial real estate analyst at New York-headquartered Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, said: “We believe investors are rotating out of high-fee, labour-intensive business models viewed as potentially vulnerable to AI-driven disruption.”However, he believes that the sell-off “may overstate the immediate risk to complex deal-making, even as the long-term AI impact remains a ‘wait-and-see’”.Dallas-based CBRE on Thursday reported fourth-quarter revenue of $11.6bn (£8.5bn), up 12%, and core earnings per share of $2.
73, above analysts’ estimates.In 2025, revenues rose by 13% to $40.6bn.The real estate services firm forecast 2026 profit above Wall Street estimates, on the back of strong momentum in leasing and facilities management, as the number of datacentres rapidly expands and billions of dollars flow into AI infrastructure.CBRE’s chief executive, Bob Sulentic, believes AI will benefit the business in the long run, with its transaction and investment work “most protected” from disruption.
“Clients engage CBRE to plan and execute complex transactions because of our creativity, strategic thinking, negotiating skills, deep base of market knowledge and broad relationships,” he said,“None of this seems likely to be replaced by AI in the foreseeable future,”
Penalty notice: Euro Car Parks fined £473,000 for ignoring regulator
Euro Car Parks is infamous for dishing out fines but the private parking company has been hit with an almost £475,000 penalty of its own after it failed to hand over information to a regulator.The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said it had imposed a £473,000 fine after the company did not respond for three months to seven requests for information, including by registered post, email and hand-delivered letter.It is the first time the CMA has issued a penalty under the new fining powers it was given in 2024.The regulator sends out “information notices” to companies when deciding whether to open an investigation, and businesses have a legal obligation to comply.The CMA said Euro Car Parks, which provides payment systems in car parks, only responded after it raised the spectre of a fine
US inflation falls to 2.4% in January after Trump’s tariffs led to price fluctuations
US inflation moderated in January to 2.4%, an easing after Donald Trump’s tariffs triggered price fluctuations last year.Prices rose 0.2% from December to January, according to data released by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday measuring the consumer price index (CPI), which measures the price of a basket of goods and services. Core CPI, which strips out the volatile food and energy industries, went up 0
Anthropic raises $30bn in latest round, valuing Claude bot maker at $380bn
Anthropic, the US AI startup behind the Claude chatbot, has raised $30bn (£22bn) in a funding round that more than doubled its valuation to $380bn.The company’s previous funding round in September achieved a value of $183bn, with further improvements in the technology since then spurring even greater investor interest.The fundraising was announced amid a series of stock market moves against industries that face disruption from the latest models, including software, trucking and logistics, wealth management and commercial property services.The funding round, led by the Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC and the hedge fund Coatue Management, is among the largest private fundraising deals on record.“Anthropic is the clear category leader in enterprise AI,” said Choo Yong Cheen, the chief investment officer of private equity at GIC
How to deal with the “Claude crash”: Relx should keep buying back shares, then buy more | Nils Pratley
As the FTSE 100 index bobs along close to all-time highs, it is easy to miss the quiet share price crash in one corner of the market. It’s got a name – the “Claude crash”, referencing the plug-in legal products added by the AI firm Anthropic to its Claude Cowork office assistant.This launch, or so you would think from the panicked stock market reaction in the past few weeks, marks the moment when the AI revolution rips chunks out of some of the UK’s biggest public companies – those in the dull but successful “data” game, including Relx, the London Stock Exchange Group, Experian, Sage and Informa.Relx, the former Reed Elsevier, whose brands include the Lancet and LexisNexis, is the most intriguing in that list. The company’s description of itself contains at least five words to provoke a yawn – “a global provider of information-based analytics and decision tools for professional and business customers” – but the pre-Claude share price was a thing of wonder
Winter Olympics: Ilia Malinin misses podium in figure skating shock; Shaidorov takes gold – as it happened
Bryan Graham was at the arena tonight, you can read his full report below:Shaidorov’s win should be celebrated. He skated brilliantly. He may be Malinin’s rival for years to come.But it’ll be impossible to remember this event as anything other than a catastrophe for the world’s best skater over the past three years by a wide margin.The flip side is that Malinin came through in the team event, which means several US skaters will leave Italy with gold medals
Matt Weston slides to skeleton gold as Team GB finally win medal at Winter Olympics
And on the seventh day, Great Britain finally won their first medal of these Olympics. At nine o’clock on Friday night Matt Weston, the man his teammates call “Captain 110%”, became the first British man ever to win the gold in the men’s skeleton, after four faultless races across the two days of competition.The 28-year-old broke the track record at the Cortina Sliding Centre four times in succession, and won in a combined time of 3min 43.33sec, which was almost a full second ahead of the runner-up, Germany’s Axel Jungk. “I’ve been fortunate enough to win world championships, and European championships and other things, and this blows them all out the water,” Weston said
NHS deal with AI firm Palantir called into question after officials’ concerns revealed
Health unions call 3.3% pay rise for 1.4m NHS staff in England ‘an insult’
‘Deeply illogical’: this man’s life work could end homelessness – and Trump is doing all he can to stop it
Children’s vocabulary shrinking as reading loses out to screen time, says Susie Dent
‘We’re on a cliff edge’: the struggle to keep youth services alive in Knowsley
One in 14 children who die in England have closely related parents, study finds