THE DAILY BRIEFING
SPREE CONTINUES British shoppers continued to splash out last month – confounding fears of a sharp slowdown in spending as prices rise.
The Office for National Statistics said retail sales rose 0.3pc in July following a 1.5pc increase in the second quarter of the year.
JOB CUTS Telecom operator Ericsson has refused to rule out job cuts in the UK. It may axe around 25,000 jobs outside Sweden, nearly a quarter of its 109,000 global staff. It has 11 sites in the UK.
TECH PARTNERSHIP Technology firm Seeing Machines has teamed up with Autoliv, the world’s biggest car safety firm, to develop a monitoring system to detect when a driver is drowsy or distracted.
LOANS DEAL Pension firm Aegon is teaming up with online lender Funding Circle to offer money to small businesses. It will hand out £160m in loans over 12 months.
CHILE INVESTMENT Miner BHP Billiton is spending £1.9bn to keep operations going at its Spence copper mine in Chile for an extra 50 years, creating up to 5,000 jobs.
NEW RULES Landlords with four or more properties will face tougher borrowing rules from Kent Reliance owner OneSavings Bank, which will insist on a business plan and a cash flow statement when they apply for a mortgage.
MORTGAGE BOOST Mortgage applications have surged at Mansfield Building Society in Nottinghamshire, which enjoyed its best ever month for applications in March. Its overall mortgage book climbed to £268m in the first half of 2017, up 3.7pc on the same period last year.
CONFIDENCE UP Global investor confidence is edging up but remains well below average, according to trading firm Hargreaves Lansdown.
Its index reveals that confidence climbed to 76 points – up from 69 in July but well below the typical level of 99. The UK rating was 56.8.
FUND LAUNCH Financial and professional services group Smith & Williamson has launched a fund to back companies developing artificial intelligence.
SIMULATOR SALES Medical training firm MedaPhor has now sold 500 ultrasound training simulators, which are used to teach medical professionals how to conduct ultrasound scans.