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Growth in sales last month was at its slowest since April 2017 according to the Office for National Statistics with the amount bought in January rising just 0.1%.

FTSE 250 construction firm Balfour Beatty is part of a joint venture that has scooped a £1.4 billion contract to build a train network at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).

The firm is gripped in a scuffle with various US drug makers to stop them creating copycat versions of its flagship drug to fight opioid addiction, Suboxone.

House prices have increased seven times faster in real terms than the average annual salary of a young worker, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

The aircraft, which can carry 116 fully equipped troops, has been beset by problems, including a fatal crash in 2015. Europe’s largest aerospace group, posted a profit of £3.7bn.

HBSC boss Stuart Gulliver bows out from his £9.7m a-year role next week once he’s delivered the bank’s latest results, an annual task the irascible northerner won’t miss after he’s gone.

The Canadian firm, which employs 4,200 staff at a plant in Belfast, made a £478m profit last year, up 57 per cent on 2016. It follows a turbulent few months for the business.

Luxury giant Burberry is offering a service that allows customers to order their favourite items from its 2018 catwalk show and have them delivered within an hour.

It follows her appointment last year to the board of budget airline EasyJet. The Canadian mother-of-one has run Royal Mail since 2010, and was paid £1.9m between 2016 and 2017.

Bridgewater is shorting some of the biggest companies on the Continent meaning it will make money if their share prices fall. It suggests a positioning for a slump in markets.

Predator Melrose may lay claim to being penny pinching accountants but are committed to spending a whopping £139.5m of shareholder funds on advisory and loan fees.

Broadband internet could soon be beamed into homes, serving 3bn people, by Elon Musk’s SpaceX after the firm won regulatory backing for a new network of satellites.

The UK capital remains by far the biggest hub of software developers, hosting almost 100,000 more than its closest competitor - Paris, new figures have revealed.

Scottish Widows said it was pulling a £109bn pot out of the firm, equal to nearly 17 per cent of total assets. Widows gave Aberdeen Asset Management the right to run its money in 2014.

Advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services said the merger would bring little benefit to Booker’s investors and that it undermined the wholesaler’s value.

GKN, which supplied cannonballs to the British Army in the Battle of Waterloo and now makes parts for fighter jets and helicopters, is fighting off an unwanted £7.4bn from the turnaround specialists.

The retailer, which is famous for its floral wallpaper and its pastel-coloured furniture, said sales dropped almost 8 per cent in the six months to December 31.

The perception is often that higher rates are bad news but for many people rate rises - or the environment which causes them to go up - are a good thing.

It may not seem like a grand romantic gesture, but making sure your spouse is financially comfortable in retirement, will go a long way towards securing your future happiness together.

A new family buy-to-let mortgage has been launched by Mansfield BS that actively targets those who may want to rent a home to their children - or perhaps even their parents.