London's deep pockets

Consumers laugh off financial crisis to top global sales figures

Maybe opening the Westfield Shopping Centre in Shepherds Bush deep in a recession wasn't such a bad idea after all. A new study shows that London's enthusiastic shoppers forked out a whopping £64.2 billion last year - more than any other city on the planet.

Despite Huw Edwards and the BBC news team droning on about the worst recession in years, it seems that the capital's profligate population have eschewed pound-stretching in favour of flashing the cash in a bid to reboot the economy.

The astonishing £64.2bn - almost ten times the value of Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea FC - beat Toyko's figures of £61.4billion, while other "superleague spenders" New York and Paris splashed out £47bn and £46.6bn respectively.

What's more, consumers spent more in London than the combined totals of Los Angeles, Milan, Rome, Madrid and Berlin. When you consider LA's movie wealth, Milan's fashion and Madrid's Galacticos, then that's quite an achievement.

It's worth noting that the study - which was carried out by the Centre for Retail Research and commissioned by the price comparison website Kelkoo - was dealing entirely with non-food retail sales. Given the nation's fixation with Tesco and the current UK obesity scare, then just imagine how much further ahead we'd be if supermarket spending was thrown in to the equation.

The study also showed that the 26,000 stores in London included 138 of the world's main 250 brands - which is 10 more than the next highest representation (Madrid) and compares to an average of 90 elsewhere.

If shopping were an Olympic sport, then it's clear we would wipe the floor at the 2012 London Games. The capital would be the Usain Bolt of the High Street, the Carl Lewis of the shopping centre, the Michael Phelps of the checkout.

Chris Simpson, Marketing Director of Kelkoo, said: "London is world-famous for its shopping and has now confirmed its status as the premier destination for consumers seeking the ultimate retail shopping experience.

"The key to London's success appears to be the quality and quantity of shops on offer, combined with the revenue generated by the huge volume of tourists that passes through."

Indeed, London attracts an estimated 14.1 million overseas tourists yearly, some four million more than its nearest rival. To further underline the capital's craze for the credit card, London was also the top world city for internet shopping, with £9.9 billion of sales last year.

The figures go a long way to allay the fears of economists who, back in 2008, suggested the Australian owners of the Westfield Shopping Centre were crazy to open such an ambitious project as the UK economy teetered on the brink of its first recession since 1991 amid the global financial crisis and house price slump.

The White City shopping centre played a large role in London's retail success last year, with sales reaching £870 million. That may be still short of the parent company's target of £1bn annual sales, but it nevertheless marks a 24.7% improvement on the previous year.

And Westfield is not in isolation: London's traditional retail destinations of Oxford Street, Regent Street, High Street Kensington and Covent Market enjoyed good years, while in the City, on the other end of the Central Line, the One New Change shopping centre opened in the shadow of St Paul's Cathedral.

It remains to be seen how much of a negative effect the latest Government spending cuts and the VAT hike will have on London's consumers - and perhaps the figures for 2011 will be more of a litmus test for the current economic climate - but for now, Londoners are showing no signs of closing their wallets.

Chinese whispers on the Tube

Chinese firm Huawei, one of the world's largest telecom equipment providers, is set to offer £50m to London Underground as a gift from one Olympic host nation to another. In return, Huawei will build a mobile phone network on the Tube so that commuters can make and receive calls for the first time while travelling underground. Rumours suggest that a deal could be signed by April - although there are fears over the possibility of cyber attacks from state-sponsored hackers in China seeking to steal military and technological secrets. Mobile operators including Vodafone and O2 have been pencilled in to pay for the installation work for the equipment.

Not so grim up North

London has been beaten by Manchester in a global survey focusing on the quality of living in 140 cities worldwide. With less of a perceived threat from petty crime and terrorism, Manchester was deemed to have better health care than London and was seen to be a more "stable" city, according to The Economist Intelligence Unit. Our northern neighbours ranked 42nd in the survey with an average rating of 90 while London was 11 positions lower with a rating of 88.4. Vancouver, Melbourne and Vienna topped the standings in that order, while Tehran, Dakar and Colombo sat at the foot of the pile.

Cemetery to rest in protected peace

The central London resting place of some of English literature's greatest names has been granted Grade I protected status. Bunhill Fields Cemetery in Islington was this week entered on the national Register of Parks and Gardens by English Heritage. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has separately listed 75 of its tombs - including that of Robinson Crusoe author Daniel Defoe, poet William Blake - who wrote the words of the hymn Jerusalem - and the Pilgrim's Progress writer John Bunyan.

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