Carillion remains in the business headlines as Clifford Chance acquire its team of 60 paralegals. Both the UK housing market and retail sales have had a slow start to 2018. Airbus, however, had its best day on the stock-market for five years despite incurring a huge loss on a military plane programme. Also in the news, Google Chrome has launched its default ad-blocker with sites given 30 days to remove disruptive ads.
Clifford Chance made a surprise acquisition of Carillion’s in-house legal team. The Carillion Advice Service (CAS) has a team of around 60 paralegals who will now be fully integrated with Clifford Chance.
The housing market in the UK has had a slow start to the year as the number of properties, buyers and sales fell in January. Sellers of properties over £1 million are finding it particularly tough with 67% failing to achieve the asking price.
Airbus took a 1.3 billion euro hit from a delayed military plane programme, however, it also experienced its biggest one-day gain on the stock-market in five years. This has helped the aircraft manufacturer close the gap on Boeing which has significantly outperformed Airbus so far in 2018.
UK retail sales were much lower than expected in January, which the Independent attributes to “high inflation and stagnant wage growth ahead of Brexit”. The Office for National Statistics identified a particular decline in food sales over the last three months.
Google has launched its default ad-blocker for Chrome, the browser reportedly used by 60% of computers and mobile devices, which will block the most intrusive ads displayed by web pages. The Coalition for Better Ads will decide which ads will be blocked.
