Taiwanese firm Fubon Life Insurance is buying the property that houses hoary old tourist trap, Madame Tussauds.
It is paying £348.8mln for the property, which is located on Marylebone Road, just around the corner from another tourist magnet, 221b Baker Street.
The property has been sold by Secure Income REIT (LON:SIR), the property firm that listed on AIM just over a year ago.
On the subject of flotations, Puretech Health, a health company specialising in treatments for previously untackled illnesses, has unveiled plans to raise US$160mln in a flotation on the London stock market.
The group has partnerships with major health players or their affiliates including Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Shire Pharmaceuticals and Google – although the last-mentioned collaboration seems a bit odd so you might be advised to check this out by doing an Internet search.
Dame Marjorie Scardino, the former boss of publishing firm Pearson, will be the senior non-executive director on the board.
Leaving the stock market is Brit (LON:BRIT), the insurance firm probably best known for sponsoring the England cricket team; the listing has been cancelled following the takeover by Fairfax Financial Holdings.
The company returned to public status in April 2014 and lasted barely a year in its second stint as an independent public company.
Meanwhile, Inspiration Healthcare, a privately-owned global medical device distribution company is reversing onto the Alternative Investment Market through a merger with Inditherm (LON:IDM), the provider of heating solutions.
"We have believed for some time that there is underlying value in Inditherm, but the combination of small scale and overhead costs have been a constraint. This transaction has the potential to unlock shareholder value and represents an excellent outcome to our review of strategic options which we have undertaken over the last year," said Inditherm’s chairman, Mark Abrahams.
Finally, and coincidentally, two stories about Irish airlines are achieving high-profile coverage today.
The Financial Times reports that the Irish government is set to clear IAG’s (LON:IAG) offer for Aer Lingus, which could put Ryanair’s nose out of joint, as it has failed several times to get a takeover of Aer Lingus off the ground.
On the other hand, Ryanair (LON:RYA) shareholders are chuffed at the no-frills airline’s full-year results, which revealed profit before tax in the year to the end of March rose by two-thirds in the year just ended from the year before.
The airline’s combative chief executive officer, Michael O’Leary, said the strong performance demonstrated the enduring strength of the company’s “lowest fare/lowest cost” model; others might surmise that abandoning a policy of deliberately winding up your own customers might have had something to do with it.