1 Property developers are set to lose planning permission on unused land if they fail to hit construction targets under moves to kickstart housebuilding. Britain’s biggest developers, nimbys and landowners can expect a “muscular” approach to drive up the supply of new homes, Sajid Javid, the housing secretary, said.
2 Mark Carney, the Bank of England governor, has called for the government to scrap the retail prices index of inflation used to set the interest rate on student loans, rail fares and on £400 billion of government debt because it has “known errors”. He suggested that the consumer prices index or the CPIH should replace it.
3 Estate agents are gaining some respite from the stagnating property market by putting homes on Airbnb while they wait for them to sell. Hunters, a leading estate agent, has begun renting out homes for its clients to “unlock extra value” amid a national slowdown in transactions.
4 The Financial Reporting Council has come under attack from MPs after saying that it had first investigated Carillion two years ago and that it had been monitoring the construction company since last summer without telling shareholders and creditors.
5 The Financial Conduct Authority has said it is willing to publish a critical report into Royal Bank of Scotland’s scandal-hit restructuring unit.
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6 The Dow Jones industrial average suffered its largest points fall in eight months, amid fears that stock markets are heading for a sharp correction. The index closed down 362.59 points at 26,076.89 in New York.
7 The GfK consumer confidence rose four points from December to -9, the largest one-month increase since September 2016, when the public mood was rallying after the Brexit vote. Lloyds Bank’s business barometer found that confidence among companies had jumped by seven points to a nine-month high of 35 per cent.
8 Navinder Sarao, the British trader blamed for helping to cause the Wall Street “flash crash”, is said to have assisted American prosecutors to bring charges against a technology firm alleged to have aided him in rigging the market.
9 Investment in the automotive industry has crashed by more than half and Jaguar Land Rover, Britain’s largest carmaker, has warned that it is reassessing the risks of an economy blighted by the uncertainties of Brexit and government attacks on diesel vehicles.
10 Blackstone, America’s largest private equity firm, is seeking to enter the market for traders’ terminals via a $17 billion partnership with Thomson Reuters, in which it would buy the latter’s financial and risk division.