Estate agent takeover

A BRITISH estate agent founded in 1885 has been bought by French bankers.

strutt & Parker, which specialises in luxury country homes and high- end London property, will be enveloped into the real estate division of BNP Paribas, ending 132 years of independence. the deal, which creates an estate agent with 1,500 staff and £206m a year turnover, will be seen as a vote of confidence in high-end London property prices, which remainers had warned would fall off a cliff after the Brexit vote. and embarrassingly for the French government, it suggests that BNP doubts Paris’s efforts to replace the city as europe’s financial hub will have much of an impact.