1 More than one and a half million households will be hit by an increase of 8.4 per cent in their electricity bills next spring after EDF raised its prices for the first time in three years. The rest of the Big Six suppliers are expected to follow suit.
2 A drug company has been accused of ripping off the NHS after increasing the price of life-saving steroid tablets from 70p to £88 a packet. Auden Mckenzie, now part of Actavis UK, raised the price of hydrocortisone tablets between 2008 and 2015, costing the NHS an extra £70 million.
3 Large parts of Britain are still unable to get a decent broadband connection, Ofcom has found. It said that 1.4 million homes and offices are still unable to receive broadband speeds of more than 10 megabits per second, which is regarded as essential to meet a household’s needs.
4 Five model agencies, including those that discovered Kate Moss and Erin O’Connor, have been fined a total of £1.5 million by the Competition and Markets Authority after they were found to have colluded to fix prices.
5 The Pensions Regulator has approved a £255 million settlement between Coats Group and its pension trustees, protecting about 24,000 members in a deal that piles pressure on Sir Philip Green over BHS.
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6 The FTSE 100 closed above 7,000 last night, approaching its all-time high. The index rose for a second consecutive week, gaining 0.8 per cent, as European equity markets were buoyed by the Dow Jones industrial average pushing towards the 20,000 mark.
7 An Australian court has fined Reckitt Benckiser £3.5 million for misleading consumers over the capabilities of its painkiller. The penalty is the largest ever for misleading conduct under Australian consumer law.
8 Manufacturers ended the year on a high note, enjoying the biggest order books in nearly two years. The CBI industrial trends survey reported that the overall level of orders had improved, with its gauge rising to zero in the three months to December, from -3 in November.
9 The average pay of partners at KPMG in the UK has fallen by 7 per cent to £582,000 as the accountancy firm has borne the costs of early retirements and hiring external talent. Profits also fell 2 per cent to £374 million but revenues rose 6 per cent to £2.1 billion in the year to September 30.
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10 Trinity Mirror, the publisher of the Daily Mirror, has said that profits will be “marginally ahead of expectations” despite a fall in revenues as advertising sales continued to decline. The group said that its revenue in the final quarter would fall by 8 per cent, a slight improvement on the previous three months.