Luxembourgish actress portrays senior banker
Désirée Nosbusch has been given the prestigious German Grimme TV Award for her portrayal of a Luxembourg-based senior banker in a gloves-off merger fight with a German bank.
The award honours the Luxembourgish actress for her portrayal of Christelle Leblanc in the German-Luxembourgish TV series “Bad Banks.” First aired in February 2018, and with Luxembourg City figuring prominently along with other European capitals, the series has been renewed in March 2018 for a second season.
The jury praised the series, which can be seen on Netflix, for being “more than a thriller about the financial world.”
“Bad Banks is a study of what people are capable of when seduced – by success, by money, by greed and power – but ‘Bad Banks’ is, and that particularly convinced the jury, a series which stages two complex female figures in a way that is seldom seen on German television,” said the Luxemburger Wort, the Luxembourg Times’ sister publication.
The actual award ceremony will take place on 5 April in Marl, Germany.
Born in Esch/Alzette in January 1965, from a Luxembourgish father and Italian mother, Nosbusch is a TV presenter and actress. She has starred in more than 15 films including Good Morning, Babylon (1987), directed by the Taviani brothers, and recently De Superjhemp retörns (2018), directed by Félix Koch.
Cloche d’Or shopping centre to open in May
The first shops in the shiny new Cloche d’Or neighbourhood south of Luxembourg will open very soon. An Auchan supermarket, the main tenant of a new shopping centre, will open its doors in May. The retail complex will include 140 shops, including clothing brands “& Other Stories”, Arket, Zara Home, Weekday and Oysho. There will also be a variety of restaurants, bars and cafés, mostly on the rooftop, and a world food hall offering cuisine from around the globe. A further 250 apartments in towers peering over the shopping complex will be delivered in December. The Cloche d’Or area is being developed by Grossfeld, a partnership between property developers Extensa and Promobe. The new area of the city has also attracted high-profile office tenants like Big Four accounts PwC and Deloitte, fund services firm Alter Domus and Italian bank Intesa SanPaolo.
US army bank sets up shop in Luxembourg
The United Services Automobile Association (USAA), a financial services group which began life in the 1920s providing car insurance to US military veterans, has set up shop in Luxembourg. The Texas-headquartered group, which has European offices in London and Frankfurt, established two companies in Luxembourg in May last year. A spokeswoman for USAA declined to comment on whether the move was related to Britain’s departure from the European Union.
Land prices increase more sharply than property prices
The cost of constructible land in Luxembourg increased by an average of 6.1 % each year between 2010 and 2017 – higher than the annual increase in property prices. The lack of available land has been at the core of the country’s housing dearth for years and has continuously been a major factor in driving up housing prices. Since 2010, properties have increased in price by around 4.7 % every year but the highest spike came last year when they rose by 7 % between the third quarter of 2017 and the same period in 2018.
The problem is that around 92 % of the total surface area of constructible land in Luxembourg is privately owned, making it difficult to acquire land.
Land owners are often reluctant to sell their plots, as there has been a steady increase in land prices, making it a secure investment. There are also very limited costs attached to land ownership, with land tax remaining insignificant and a lack of specific taxes on unbuilt land.
According to a report published by the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) for the housing ministry, the median price of constructible land between 2010 and 2017 stood at € 58,312 per are, or 100 square metres. Between 2016 and 2017 the median price for land was € 65,521.