A central benefit of the real estate asset class is the potential to generate alpha from effective portfolio and asset management. But navigating through the current environment poses investment challenges.

Amazon UK had its busiest day on record on Black Friday in November 2015, selling more than 7.4 million items, at a rate of around 86 items per second, and surpassing Black Friday 2014, previously the busiest day ever.

Did we do it? Did commercial real estate transaction activity across Europe last year hit a new record? Unsurprisingly, six days into the new year the full-year 2015 numbers have yet to be announced and will probably differ between the various brokers and consultants that do the number-crunching.

As companies’ reliance on third parties — such as contractors, partners and suppliers — increases, the need to both detect and prevent risk from these third parties becomes ever more important.

Two of the euro zone’s “problem children” — Spain and Portugal — have succeeded in recent years in putting their economies back on an even keel after the global financial crisis and the euro zone sovereign debt debacle, with long-overdue austerity programmes helping to overhaul public finances and reduce debt and deficit burdens.

London’s West End was the world’s highest-priced office market for the second straight year last year.