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. It has been on a steady downward trajectory since 30 September last year, when it bought 69.32 US cents. But this is 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

It’s time to get serious about stamp duty on shares, a terrible advert for London | Nils Pratley

Last year was another depressing one for departures from the London stock market. Back in January, it was Flutter heading for the exit. The owner of Paddy Power, Betfair and Sky Bet got itself a secondary listing in the US and said it would quickly convert it into the primary one, which it did in May.When December arrived, we were still on the same theme. Ashtead Group, the £27bn construction rental company that has been listed in London since 1986, announced plans to shift its primary listing to New York