Wholesale gas price hits highest level in 14 months after Russian supplies stop

The wholesale price of gas has risen to its highest level in more than a year after Russian supplies stopped flowing to rest of Europe via Ukraine.Benchmark prices rose on Thursday to the highest level since October 2023, a day after a longstanding transit contract between Russia and Ukraine expired. Russian gas deliveries across Ukraine ended in the early hours of New Year’s Day.Traders had been expecting the loss of Russian gas, with no alternative in place, and were closely monitoring whether it would lead to quicker withdrawals from storage facilities.The price of gas for February delivery in the Netherlands rose as much as 4

Why is the Australian dollar falling – and what does it mean for interest rates, travel and the economy?

The Australian dollar has had a rocky start to the year, dropping below 62 US cents on Wednesday and hitting a low of 61.84 US cents on Thursday morning. Although it has recovered slightly in early trade on Friday, it has been on a steady downward trajectory since 30 September last year, when it bought 69.32 US cents. But Thursday was the first time it has been below 62 US cents since 2022

UK house prices rise for fourth month in a row, says Nationwide

House prices rose for a fourth consecutive month in December, ending 2024 on a “strong footing”, Nationwide said, with the cost of an average home hitting £269,426.The building society’s monthly tracker found prices in December rose 0.7% on the previous month and were up 4.7% on an annual basis.This marks the strongest rate of annual price inflation since Nationwide recorded 7

Lidl enjoys record £1bn UK sales in run-up to Christmas

Lidl made more than £1bn in sales in the run-up to Christmas for the first time in the three decades the discount grocer has been operating in the UK as cash-strapped shoppers cut costs.The German-owned discounter, which is close to overtaking Morrisons to become the UK’s fifth biggest supermarket chain, said it made more than £1bn in sales in the four weeks leading up to Christmas Eve.The company recorded a 7% increase in sales on the same period a year earlier as more than 2 million shoppers sought festive season deals. The supermarket chain experienced its busiest day of the year on 23 December.Lidl said it sold more than 16m British pigs in blankets, 8m stuffing balls and 2m litres of gravy

UK needs to ban full hybrid cars by 2030 or face net zero ‘catastrophe’, says motoring body

Britain needs to press ahead with a ban on the sale of new hybrid cars with no plug from 2030 or risk taking “a catastrophic misstep” on the road to net zero, ministers have been warned.Cars such as the Toyota Prius, which charge a battery from an internal combustion engine, need to be excluded from the list of vehicles sold in the UK from 2030 or there will be a “profound” fall in confidence in the government’s commitment to electric motoring, according to the representative body Electric Vehicles UK (EVUK).The Department for Transport (DfT) will ban the sale of new cars powered solely by internal combustion engines from 1 January 2030.It is consulting on what other types of new cars – such as full hybrids – can be sold between that date and the end of 2034, after which all non-zero-emission new cars will be prohibited.Ministers have come under huge pressure to delay the date when a full ban on non-electric cars takes place

UK lost 37 shops a day in 2024, data suggests

The UK lost about 37 shops a day during 2024 in yet another brutal year for the high street, data suggests.Almost 13,500 retail stores closed for good in the last 12 months, a rise of 28% on 2023 – although the losses were below the levels seen each year between 2019 and 2022, according to provisional figures compiled by the Centre for Retail Research.The group’s research director, Prof Joshua Bamfield, said: “The results for 2024 show that although the outcomes for store closures overall were not as poor as in either 2020 or 2022, they are still disconcerting, with worse set to come in 2025.”He said the research group expected store closures to rise by the same factor again during 2025, to about 17,350, with approximately 14,660 coming from independent retailers.Pressure on retailers, particularly independents, has been a long-running theme for the high street, although new challenges are emerging alongside the more persistent threats