Business

Image copyright Upgrade Pack Image caption Craig Unsworth and business partner Urchana Moudgil found it is tax efficient to swap the Christmas do for a conference. Is the traditional office Christmas party still fit for purpose? Company boss, Craig Unsworth, doesn’t think so. “We’ve got people who don’t celebrate Christmas culturally, we’ve got people who […]

Image copyright Sarah Fardon A big night out in London once cost Sarah Fardon a whopping £250. However, the typical night is about £60 to £100, says the 30-year-old consultant. Sarah isn’t the only one splashing the cash on nights out in towns and cities across the UK. Consumers now spend an average of £69.64

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Campaigners dressed as eagles protest against Barclays’ pay arrangements at the company’s 2012 AGM “The average chief executive of a major American corporation – according to a recent Senate hearing – is paid about 100 times as much as the average worker. And our government today rewards that excess

The US is almost completely dependent on China for rare earths. Everyone is. China produces 85-100% of all rare earth metals, which are essential to most defence and consumer technology. There’s a hill in the desert of west Texas that contains a lot of rare earths. BBC News spoke to the company which plans to

Are you driven crazy by the same old music being pumped out in shops, hotels and bars? One company, called Open Ear, says it has the solution. It offers to replace the handful of CDs that most businesses play with music playlists designed to suit their image and ambience. Open Ear’s chief executive Brian D’Souza

Image copyright Reuters Image caption The Sackler family, which owns Purdue Pharma, is accused of fuelling the US’s opioid crisis The billionaire Sackler family started to take far more money out of Oxycontin-producer Purdue Pharma after the firm pleaded guilty to misleading marketing in 2007. The family transferred about $10.7bn (£8bn) out of Purdue Pharma

Image copyright Reuters Image caption Samsung executives used a variety of tactics to target union activities A South Korean court has sentenced Samsung Electronics board chairman Lee Sang-hoon to 18 months in prison for sabotaging labour union activities. Lee and about 25 other defendants were convicted of violating labour union-related laws. Prosecutors said Samsung executives

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The agents regularly met up to discuss private pricing details after initially fixing fees in September 2008, the CMA said Three estate agents in Berkshire have been fined more than £600,000 after illegally fixing minimum commission rates for seven years. Michael Hardy, Prospect, Richard Worth, and a fourth company,

Image copyright Reuters Persimmon does not have an agreed minimum standard for all the houses that it builds, an independent report into the company has found. It said the lack of a group build policy increases the risk of defects. One result is a lack of fire-stopping cavity barriers or ones which have been installed

A “60 Minutes” associate producer is suing CBS, claiming she was harassed by her boss, longtime producer Michael Gavshon, and then ostracized at the show after speaking up about his behavior.  The lawsuit, filed in New York State Supreme Court on Tuesday, comes a little more than a year after the famed television newsmagazine supposedly