1 Some of Britain’s biggest companies have handed billions of pounds to shareholders and continued to give executives large pay packets despite soaring pension deficits. Bosses at companies with large pension deficits have paid themselves almost £370 million over the past five years, despite shortfalls increasing by almost 50 per cent.
2 President Trump took to the stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos to launch a huge sales pitch for investment in America and softened his isolationist rhetoric towards the rest of the world. Speaking to a group of the world’s political and business elite, he declared that he had created a “a brand new United States”.
3 A shock ruling by America’s International Trade Commission in a bitter dispute over Bombardier jets has potentially saved thousands of jobs in Northern Ireland. The ITC said that the US government cannot slap crippling tariffs on imports of C Series jets, for which the wings are made in Belfast.
4 Threatened postal strikes have been averted after Royal Mail and the Communication Workers Union struck a peace deal over pensions, pay and working hours. The two sides issued a joint statement on a proposed agreement, which needs approval from the Royal Mail board and a ballot of CWU members.
5 BT is to announce plans for an accelerated rollout of full-fibre broadband to an extra one million households as its Openreach subsidiary prepares to invest hundreds of millions of pounds more into the technology. The group’s board is expected to give Openreach the go-ahead next week to install full fibre-optic connections to three million homes over the next two years.
Advertisement
6 Wall Street is “very likely” to suffer a sharp fall, possibly of thousands of points, in the next few weeks, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, one of the world’s biggest investment banks, has warned.
7 Underlying corporate failures in England and Wales rose by 2.5 per cent in 2017 compared with the previous year, figures from the Insolvency Service show.
8 On-off talks between CBS and Viacom about a $38 billion merger appear to be back on, according to reports. The chief executives of the companies met this month to discuss a deal that will now be considered by their boards.
9 Estate agents battling against the stranglehold of Rightmove and Zoopla have floated Onthemarket, their rival property advertising portal, but only after slashing the offer price.
10 Kwek Leng Beng has suffered defeat in his attempt to take Millennium & Copthorne Hotels private after minority shareholders rejected the Singapore-based tycoon’s 620p-a-share bid.