1 Carillion gave its nervous shareholders some reassurance as it won two big contracts on the HS2 high-speed rail line and boosted the number of City advisers helping it to cut costs and improve cashflow. Shares in the construction and support services group, which lost 70 per cent of their value last week after a profit warning sparked fears of an emergency fundraising, rose by almost 20 per cent to 66¾p. Before the warning they had been changing hands for 192p.
2 Centrica, the owner of British Gas, is spinning off its oil and gas production business into a new joint venture with Bayerngas Norge, of Germany, with a view to a potential initial public offering within two to five years.
3 Baroness Brady, the entrepreneur best known for her leading roles at West Ham United football club and on The Apprentice, has been appointed chairwoman of the company behind Taveta Investments, the parent company of Sir Philip Green’s Arcadia Group retail empire.
4 Dame Carolyn McCall’s appointment as chief executive of ITV ended weeks of speculation about the broadcaster’s future after Adam Crozier confirmed his decision to leave the post in May. Investors welcomed the move.
5 Brexit will hurt the car and financial services industries and locations as diverse as London and the Isles of Scilly, according to analysis by the Office for National Statistics drawn up to show which parts of the country could be most affected.
Advertisement
6 Sending nearly a million “nuisance” text messages advertising high-interest debt has landed Provident Financial with an £80,000 fine. The penalty was imposed on Provident Personal Credit, part of the FTSE 100 sub-prime lender, for a “serious contravention” of data protection rules.
7 The City watchdog has begun an investigation into the fast-growing £600 billion investment platform industry amid concerns that investors may not be getting the best value for money and that big providers could be keeping out competition from cheaper rivals.
8 Electric car chargers could be switched off remotely or turned down by energy companies if owners refuse to use them at off-peak times.
9 Government help-to-work schemes are missing a trick by ignoring opportunities from the gig economy to find jobs for the unemployed, a report by Reform, an independent public services think tank, has claimed.
10 The annual pace of growth in the Chinese economy is set to quicken for the first time since 2010. Latest figures show that GDP grew by 6.9 per cent in the first half of the year, ahead of the government’s target figure of “around 6.5 per cent”.