From the Gulf, Money for Towers in London

A Kuwaiti fund recently spent £400 million ($783 million) to buy the Willis Building, one of the tallest in the square-mile financial district, and plans to invest even more here.

Qatar, the sultanate of Oman, and Arab Investments — a secretive London-based fund — are also investing in skyscrapers that will transform the City, as the district is known, over the next three years.

London has a long history of welcoming foreigners and their money, but the City is particularly eager for investment now because the credit crisis threatens to slow several projects.

Why the City of London is right to fear Dubai

Senior figures in the United Kingdom government are increasingly concerned about the rise of Dubai as a financial centre and what it might mean for the future of the City of London.

They fear that a combination of huge oil surpluses in the Middle East and a relatively low-cost business hub, regulated with a common law legal system, may prove an irresistible lure to financial executives struggling with soaring costs in a global recession.

Last week Standard Chartered chief economist Gerald Lyons told journalists in Dubai that he had recently been in a meeting with senior members of the UK government where, for the first time in his experience, genuine concern over the mounting competition from Dubai as a financial centre was expressed "at the highest levels".

Agent's false claims on £1m homes

Its website says: 'We walk down the best streets in London on a daily basis, Cadogan Square, Eaton Square, Eaton Place, Chesham Place, Cadogan Place, Lennox Gardens and Egerton Gardens. We think of these addresses as being 'our' streets.'

But records show Egerton Roche was set up last October and 2 Eaton Gate is an accommodation address.

The real offices appear to be miles away in Kennington.

London City Office Rents Will Fall 40%

Rental prices for office space in London's main financial district will fall at least 40 percent from their peak before recovering, the London-based Times newspaper reported, citing property investor Chris Bartram.

Developers such as Land Securities Group Plc will scale back or delay some large planned buildings and move tenants to newer properties, and the current decline will be shorter than the four-year slide that began in 1991, the Times quoted Bartram as saying in an interview.

There are international investors with ``a lot of cash'' who are looking to invest in U.K. commercial property, he told the Times. Bartram, former chief executive of Dutch real estate company Haslemere NV, has set up a 300 million-pound ($595 million) investment fund, partially bankrolled by the sovereign wealth fund of Singapore, the Times said.