THE DAILY BRIEFING

■ RATE RISE Half the population are braced for a rise in interest rates from 0.5pc over the next 12 months, a Bank of England study has found.

■ CAR BOOST Customers borrowed £1.6bn to buy cars in April – up 31pc on a year earlier. A total of 81,734 cars were bought with loaned cash during the month, a rise of 27pc, said the Finance & Leasing Association.

■ ROMAN RUINS Markets in Italy have suffered further stress as investors fret about its new Eurosceptic leadership. It suggests investors see Italy as a risk after a coalition hostile to the euro took charge.

■ BOSS BOOTED Compliance chief Neil Barry has left Standard Chartered bank after the lender found his management style and behaviour offensive, inappropriate and out of line with its values.

■ GAME ON Hollywood director JJ Abrams’s production company Bad robot has teamed up with Tencent, China’s biggest technology company, to make video games.

■ AI IDEALS Principles dictating how Google uses artificial intelligence (AI) technology have been unveiled, including the requirement that it is socially beneficial.

■ JET DEAL Plane maker Airbus has taken a controlling stake in Canadian rival Bombardier’s flagship C-Series jetliner programme.

■ METAL LINK Copper miner Kaz Minerals has sold a 19.4pc stake in its Koksay project in Kazakhstan to China Nonferrous Metal for £52m.

■ SPENDING GUSH Not-for-profit firm Welsh Water plans to plough an extra £40m into its network, including £7m to reduce flood risk in Cardiff.

■ BOARD ROLE Alton Towers owner Merlin Entertainments has appointed Andrew Fisher, executive chairman of music discovery business Shazam, to its board.

■ CASH CALL Japanese pharma group Takeda is raising £5.6bn to bankroll the cash portion of its acquisition of Irish rival Shire.