Further research revealed that the land in question had already been snapped up by a combination of the Church Commissioners, the Royal Family (along with various aristocratic connections) and the Prudential. Add a few other insurers and land companies and this Sceptred Isle was obviously well and truly spoken for, bar the odd scrap of common land masquerading as a village green.
Never mind, I thought, there’s still the opportunity to make money from what you put on that land – property. But getting a return from property requires time as well as timing. This is not a new rule and would seem to me to be reasonably easy to remember. But it’s a lesson that has to be learnt time and again by our banks who seem to lack any sort of corporate memory.

During the last boom banks lent property companies about £225bn, of which about £43bn comes due this year. As many of the companies the banks lent to have gone bust, are going bust or are operating in the teeth of a deep recession, the chances of getting much of this loan book back are slim. This was true in the last recession and the recession before that and the recession before that. You get the picture.

Yesterday, Manchester-based Modus Ventures became the latest property company to go into administration. So far banks have delayed calling in loans and repossessing properties but the creation of the state-backed asset protection scheme will speed this process up.

A huge amount of bad news can be expected for the rest of the year as a shrinking economy causes tenants to stall on rental payments, disturbing cash flows to landlords which cannot subsequently service bank loans. The banks will be forced to write off the debt, ensuring they’re loss-making at least for this year and next. Will the banks learn their lesson this time? Probably not.

The next mistake they are moving towards inexorably is to sell the property they repossess cheaply to raise cash. Right on cue yesterday, London’s Alternative Investment Market (Aim) announced May would be its strongest month for nearly a year for specialist companies raising cash for investment; the biggest sector involved? You guessed it, property.

In one week alone this month a total of £700m was raised in the City by several new property investment funds. Those gnarled old veterans are at it again, ready for what one described as “the counter-cyclical buying opportunity of a generation”.

Magna deal will keep Vauxhall on the road

When General Motors files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US on Monday, as expected, the recession will claim its biggest victim. But America’s bankruptcy protection laws mean the old banger can be wheeled into the body shop and re-emerge a restructured company with new engine and parts. A group of careful new owners could run it for another 100 years. The UK lacks the same laws, arguably putting our economy at a disadvantage.

Here we’ve been subjected to anxious days of talks over the future of GM Europe, including our Vauxhall plants in Luton and Ellesmere Port. It now looks like Magna, a Canadian car parts group, will take over the factories but Lord Mandelson’s hope that no UK jobs will be lost appears hopeless. Magna plans to cut 10,000 jobs in Europe and while sites such as Ellesmere Port are highly productive, the UK has to shoulder its share of the pain.

But as a new entrant to the industry here, Magna needs to maintain sizeable capacity so is unlikely to cut to the bone. If it happens, the deal will be better than nothing and likely to save as many UK jobs as possible, but certainly not all.