Credit crunch brings Dylan and the four horsemen of the apocalypse

The boss of developer Brixton quoted gloomy Bob Dylan lyrics and invoked the four horsemen of the apocalypse in the company’s corporate statements yesterday.

Revealing a pre-tax loss of £236.7m, the firm’s half-yearly report included a picture of the four horsemen - the biblical harbingers of doom.

Inside the report, references to Dylan’s gloomy All Along the Watchtower included "None of them along the line know what any of it is worth" and "There must be some way out of here said the joker to the thief".

Wheeler also wrote: "If the ‘thieves’ are the funded or equity-based opportunist buyers and the ‘jokers’ are the owners who won’t sell, there is no ‘way out’ of this impasse yet."

Brixton reported a 10% drop in the value of its own portfolio in the first six months of the year, a worse performance than the IPD benchmark industrial property index, reported the Financial Times.

The company, which develops warehouses and business parks, has been hit by the tax on empty buildings and the fall in value of its rental portfolio, the Guardian reported.