Toyota recalls over 1M vehicles to fix air bag

Toyota is recalling just over 1 million vehicles worldwide because the air bags could inflate without a crash or fail to work if there is one.

The recall covers about 17,000 Scion xA vehicles in the US from 2004 through 2006. Also affected in Japan, Europe and elsewhere are the Isis, Avensis, Avensis Wagon, Allex, ist, Wish, Corolla, Corolla Spacio, Corollo Verso, Corolla Fielder, Corolla Runx, and Sienta. The vehicles were built from July 2002 to June 2015.

Toyota said Thursday an electrical short can damage circuits. That could deactivate the air bags and seat belt pretensioners or cause those systems to deploy inadvertently.

Barclays picks Nigel Higgins as chairman

Barclays said that Nigel Higgins, the deputy chairman of Rothschild & Co, would succeed John McFarlane as chairman on May 2 next year when he retires after serving his four-year term.

Higgins will join the Barclays Board as a non-executive director on March 1, 2019 and take over as chairman in May after the AGM, the bank said.

Barclays has been subject to radical transformation in recent years and has faced uncertainty over its leadership, mainly due to regulatory scrutiny of CEO Jes Staley’s treatment of a whistleblower.

Starbucks beats fiscal Q4 forecasts

A jump in US sales helped Starbucks end its fiscal year on a high note.

Starbucks said its samestore sales — a critical measure for retailers — rose 4 per cent in the US in its fiscal fourth quarter. That helped its global same-store sales rise 3 per cent, ahead of analysts’ expectations, according to FactSet.

Same-store sales rose 1 percent in China, another critical market for the coffee chain and an improvement from the prior quarter.

UK builders pick up pace in October

Britain’s construction sector recovered last month from a slowdown in September thanks to a bounce-back in civil engineering projects, but confidence in the outlook slumped to a near 6year low ahead of Brexit, a survey showed.

Data firm IHS Markit’s purchasing managers’ index for the construction industry rose to 53.2, its secondhighest level in 16 months. That was up from a six-month low of 52.1 in September and above all the forecasts in a Reuters poll of economists.