1 Young farmers are being pushed away from careers in agriculture by business people and celebrities buying up swathes of land to avoid inheritance tax on their wealth and contributing to the problem of high average ages in the industry, Adam Henson, a Countryfile presenter and farmer, has warned.
2 The consumer group Which? has urged British Airways to award compensation automatically to more than 75,000 customers who were caught up the IT failure that closed Heathrow and Gatwick over the bank holiday weekend, arguing that forcing them to apply would push them “into the arms of claims management companies”.
3 Vanilla has doubled in price to become more expensive than silver after a tropical cyclone destroyed crops in Madagascar, where 70 per cent of the world’s supply is grown.
4 BP has reached a deal with Rosneft, the state-controlled Russian energy giant, that could break the pipeline monopoly of Gazprom and set BP on the path to becoming a crucial player in the European gas market.
5 Housebuilding underpinned a jump in the construction industry last month as builders appeared to put Brexit worries behind them and activity rose more quickly than at any time over the last year and a half.
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6 The Institute of Directors has called on the next government to resolve confusion over the status of workers in the UK’s gig economy, arguing that while the growth of self-employment has improved flexibility and autonomy it has also created uncertainty.
7 Britain has topped a list of the world’s biggest spenders on online food shopping for the second year running, according to Kantar Worldpanel, which said there was still huge room for growth for grocers in the UK e-commerce market.
8 Akzo Nobel has promised to repair relations with its shareholders after PPG Industries from the United States walked away from a takeover of its Dutch rival having had three offers rejected.
9 HSBC has admitted that it is struggling to fill more than a thousand posts at the new Birmingham headquarters of its retail and commercial bank, six months before the office is due to open.
10 Jonathan Lewis, chief executive of Amec, has said he remains confident that the company’s £2.2 billion takeover by Wood Group, its rival in the North Sea, will go ahead despite worried about allegations of corruption at Unaoil.