THE DAILY BRIEFING

■ BOARD SHAKE-UP Lenders are running out of patience with debtladen care home group Four Seasons, as uS hedge fund H/2 Capital Partners has forced a board shakeup to hurry along a sale.

The uK’s largest care home operator – it looks after roughly 17,000 elderly and vulnerable residents in the country – is now set to launch a formal sales process.

Creditors include H/2, which lent Four Seasons £70m to stay afloat when it hit the rocks last year and has ousted senior members of the board. They have been replaced by Baroness Margaret Ford and Mark Ordan, a turnaround specialist and the founder of a supermarket which was sold to Whole Foods.

The group hopes a new owner can put it on a firmer financial footing.

■ SALE FAIL Miner Rio Tinto has failed to agree the sale of its £1bn stake in a major iron ore project to a Chinese state-owned group after two years of talks.

■ PROBE DEMANDED rail body Network Rail has called on european competition officials to intervene in the merger of Germany’s Siemens and France’s Alstom, saying that the deal would leave more than 90pc of signalling in the hands of the combined business, posing competition concerns.

■ RECORD DEAL Computing giant IBM has struck a £26.5bn deal to buy uS software firm red Hat, its largest acquisition ever. It specialises in open-source computer operating systems that are an alternative to Microsoft Windows.

■ LABOUR WATCH Smartphone maker Apple is probing claims illegal student labour in China is making its Apple Watches after human rights campaigners raised concerns over a factory in Chongqing.

■ HOTEL PLAN Budget hotel chain Easyhotel is to build a £12m 145-bedroom hotel in Bristol, to open in 2020.

■ TESLA AID Scottish investment fund Baillie Gifford, the third-biggest investor in electric car maker Tesla, with 7.7pc, will plough more cash into the firm.

■ ON BOARD Luxury fashion website Matches Fashion has appointed Maureen Chiquet and Trevor Mather to its board. Chiquet is former global chief executive of Chanel and Mather is chief executive of Auto Trader Group.

■ PERMITS TALK Spain’s Nuclear Safety Council is not behind reports that it intends to deny uranium miner Berkeley Energia permits for its main mine, the company said yesterday.

■ NEW ROLE Mark Willis, the finance director of ten-pin bowling firm Ten Entertainment, has quit to join Pendragon.

■ OIL CASH North Sea oil and gas company Faroe Petroleum has secured an extra £78m from its banks to fund growth. It is drilling an exploration well in the North Sea.