1 Retail sales fell at the fastest rate in nearly five years in December as higher prices and Black Friday deals in November led consumers to buy less, according to the Office for National Statistics.
2 Carlos Ghosn, chief executive of Nissan and Renault, said that the carmaker would review the case for future investment in Britain when the terms of its exit from the European Union become clear.
3 The next stage in delivering the HS2 rail network has got under way with the search beginning for a company to take on the £2.75 billion contract to build the high-speed trains. The Department for Transport said that up to 60 trains were needed for the first phase to run between London and Birmingham.
4 More than 7,000 customers of HSBC and John Lewis’s lending business are in line for a total of at least £4 million in compensation after the Financial Conduct Authority found that Britain’s largest bank had hit them with “unreasonable” debt collection charges between 2003 and 2009.
5 Aviva, which has operated in Hong Kong for more than 150 years, has agreed a deal with Hillhouse Capital, an investment firm, and Tencent, a mainland-based internet investor, to seek a larger share of the former British territory’s insurance market.
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6 Bonmarché, one of Britain’s largest value womenswear retailers, said it had a tough Christmas, with like-for-like sales at its stores dipping by 3.4 per cent in the five weeks to December 24, but has told investors that it still expects to meet full-year profit targets.
7 The American economy will “work fine” under Donald Trump because it is fuelled by “secret sauce”, Warren Buffett, a prominent backer of Hillary Clinton in her presidential election campaign and a critic of the new president, has said. John Paulson, the billionaire hedge fund manager and Trump backer, has said that he increased his firm’s long positions in US shares.
8 Advisory fees totalling more than £30 million will be generated by the proposed £1.8 billion takeover of Punch Taverns by Heineken and Patron Capital, its private equity partner.
9 A determination to be seen as environmentally friendly as well as business-friendly has prompted the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the new Chinese rival to the World Bank, to dash the coal industry’s hopes of a source of easy funding.
10 Wind farms on remote Scottish islands should continue to receive subsidies, despite the government’s pledge to end financial support for onshore wind, because they are more expensive than turbines on the mainland, SSE and EDF, the energy groups, have said.