1 Household energy bills are forecast to be hundreds of pounds a year lower than expected in the second half of this year, falling below the government’s £3,000 price guarantee after a sharp drop in wholesale prices.
2 Meta Platforms, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, has been fined €390 million by the Irish information regulator for breaching European Union data privacy laws and ordered to change the way it collects user information.
3 Multiverse, the education business run by Euan Blair, almost trebled its turnover last year but losses mounted. Sales at the apprenticeship company hit £27.2 million in the year to the end of March 2022, but pre-tax losses widened from £10.9 million to £14.2 million.
4 Annual UK new car sales have plunged to a 30-year low. Last year 1.61 million new cars were registered, including a record 370,000 plug-ins. The numbers would have been worse but for an end-of-year rally helped by a bumper shipment of Teslas.
5 Dignity has received a cash takeover proposal from a consortium including Sir Peter Wood, the insurance industry entrepreneur, and the listed funerals company’s former boss, valuing it at about £263 million.
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6 Policymakers have expressed concern over the risk of “misperception” that the Federal Reserve was weakening its resolve to curb inflation as it slowed the rate of interest rate rises last month, according to minutes from the rate-setting meeting in December that were released last night.
7 Business groups are calling on the government to reassess the introduction of targeted energy bills support and to consider the size of companies before a delayed announcement next week. Ministers will outline support after the six-month scheme ends in March.
8 HSBC has been drawn into a backlash against sustainable investment policies in the United States after Kentucky accused Europe’s biggest bank of damaging livelihoods by shifting away from putting cash into fossil fuel producers.
9 A new kind of submarine drone could be a step forward in the search for oil and gas reserves. Its developers believe, though, that the biggest market could be the search for the right kind of reservoirs to store captured carbon dioxide emissions.
10 Brompton Bicycle is preparing to shift parts of its supply chain out of Taiwan amid fears of a possible invasion of the island by China. The company makes the majority of the parts it needs for its folding bikes at its plant in Greenford on the outskirts of London, but sources some components such as hubs, brake levers and calipers from Taiwan.