1 Dame Alison Rose, the former boss of NatWest, twice breached data protection laws when she told a BBC journalist about the closure of Nigel Farage’s account, the data watchdog has ruled. The Information Commissioner’s Office findings come amid growing expectations that the NatWest board is poised to dock Rose’s severance package over the scandal.
2 Sam Bankman-Fried plans to testify at his criminal fraud trial in New York after his closest associates blamed the former billionaire for the collapse last November of his FTX cryptocurrency exchange.
3 A smaller charge for bad loans than had been feared has helped Lloyds Banking Group to quarterly profits of almost £1.9 billion. William Chalmers, the bank’s finance chief, said there had been a “slight improvement” in the group’s outlook for the economy.
4 The world must “buckle up” for a lengthy period of higher interest rates to prevent inflation gripping the global economy, Kristalina Georgieva, the head of the International Monetary Fund, said yesterday.
5 Next is one of the UK’s biggest clothing retailers, with 700 shops and 44,000 employees. It also sells thousands of third-party products and hundreds of brands through its Label website. But its boss, Lord Wolfson of Aspley Guise, does not want growth to stop there.
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6 Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group has raised its stakes in both Boohoo Group and Asos for the third time this month. The owner of Sports Direct, House of Fraser, Flannels and Jack Wills increased its holding in Boohoo to 16.5 per cent from 15.1 per cent, a week after it had raised its stake from 13.4 per cent.
7 Retailers are bracing for a frugal festive season, the world’s biggest maker of Christmas crackers has warned. IG Design, based in Buckinghamshire, said its customers — comprising the world’s big supermarkets and shops, including Tesco and Walmart — had placed fewer orders for Christmas crackers, cards and wrapping paper.
8 Production forecasts for the ill-starred 737 Max, the short-haul aircraft that is supposed to transform the financial performance of Boeing, have been cut by the heavily lossmaking aircraft manufacturer.
9 Lenders that helped to finance Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover of Twitter, the social media business he later renamed X, expect to make a $2 billion loss on the $13 billion loaned for the deal.
10 Shell is cutting up to a quarter of the workforce in one of its main low-carbon divisions as part of its new chief executive’s drive to improve profitability. It said 200 roles would go next year in its “low-carbon solutions” business, which employs 1,300 people.