British businesses have the opportunity to create 240,000 low-carbon jobs and boost green exports by billions of pounds to radically transform the UK economy over the next decade, the CBI has said. The UK’s foremost business lobby group said businesses across the country stood to gain from an “early mover advantage” by leading a campaign to decarbonise the global economy to avoid a climate meltdown. – Guardian
The EU is to introduce sweeping reforms of farming subsidies this week to try to halt the decline of small farms and protect them from the intensification of agriculture fostered by decades of previous policies. Janusz Wojciechowski, the EU agriculture commissioner, said: “My intention is that this process of disappearing small farms should be stopped. The European food sector in the past was based on small farms, and it should be in the future as well.” – Guardian
Soaring demand for video streaming could hamper Britain’s ambition to go carbon-neutral unless laws governing the internet are radically reformed, BT has warned. Millions of consumers watching shows on Netflix, Amazon and YouTube are triggering sharp spikes in power demand, the broadband provider said in a filing with the telecoms watchdog Ofcom. – Telegraph
Secondhand car prices are soaring to unprecedented levels as a perfect storm hits the motoring industry. Prices have jumped an average of 6.2pc in May following a 2pc rise the previous month amid a scramble to get on the road, according to research by Car Dealer magazine – the biggest increase it has ever recorded. – Telegraph
Lloyds Banking Group has been accused of trying to “rewrite history” with the publication of a new defence of its handling of the HBOS Reading fraud. A document that outlines the bank’s approach to the scam has provoked anger among victims and criticism by the commissioner of the police force that investigated the case. The fraud, which took place before Lloyds rescued HBOS in 2009, damaged about 200 businesses. It involved bankers and consultants who exploited reckless credit policies to steal hundreds of millions of pounds from the bank. Six people were jailed in 2017. – The Times
A builder of high-speed broadband infrastructure is in talks over the potential sale of a £1 billion stake to help it to compete with BT. Greg Mesch, chief executive of CityFibre, said that it was in talks with 20 pension and infrastructure funds about a prospective investment to help to fund its UK rollout. – The Times
