1 Up to half a million second-hand cars bought last year were showing the wrong mileage because many finance deals include mileage limits, creating a strong incentive for owners to reduce the mileage.
2 Sales of diesel cars in Britain fell by just over 20 per cent last month as sales of hybrid or electric rose above 5 per cent for the first time.
3 Stronger-than-expected American jobs figures, with unemployment down to a
16-year low in July, and renewed talk from the White House about a tax break for overseas corporate profits pushed the Dow Jones industrial average to a new high, prompting a shortening of the odds on a Federal Reserve rate rise.
4 Hargreaves Lansdown, one of Britain’s biggest financial companies, has dropped plans for a special dividend after the City regulator told it to raise the amount of capital it holds to cover a crisis.
5 Mike Lloyd, head of the AA’s insurance business, has been revealed as the previously unnamed man at the centre of the “Jeremy Clarkson” bust-up that led to the sacking of the breakdown company’s chairman this week.
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6 Royal Bank of Scotland made a £939 million profit for the six months to June 30, its second-best performance since the financial crisis. Ross McEwan, the bank’s chief executive, said that it was “quite a relief” for the whole business to have worked through most of its historical problems and to see its core retail and business banking operations drive up profits by almost 30 per cent.
7 A crack in a cable fixture on a bridge in the Ruhr was the latest sign of Germany’s creaking infrastructure this week as pressure grew for Berlin to start spending for the good of its roads and railways and the eurozone economy.
8 Brit, the Lloyd’s of London insurer, has joined a growing chorus warning of the difficulties facing the insurance market. It said that premium rates had slid by 2.2 per cent in the first half, albeit not as sharp a decline as the 3.7 per cent fall a year earlier.
9 Legal & General, the FTSE 100 insurer, has made its first entry into the retirement housing market. It plans to build 3,000 homes for older people over the next five years, after spending £40 million to buy Inspired Villages Group, previously a joint venture between English Care Villages, a specialist operator, and Places for People, a housing association.
10 Employees and investors of Pearson were given a harsh lesson in business survival when John Fallon, chief executive, said that the publisher would cut a further 3,000 jobs and chop its interim dividend as it continued its transformation from a media conglomerate to an education business.