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Aston Martin says it expects its full-year sales to grow more than 30% in 2017, heralding a turnaround at the luxury carmaker.

The British firm, which is famed for making the sports car driven James Bond, has made an annual loss in each of the last six years.

But it has now raised its outlook for the year after posting its first Q1 profit for a decade. Pre-tax earnings were £5.9m in the first three months of 2017, while revenues more than doubled to £188m thanks to strong demand for its new DB11 model.

"The amount of customers who are buying these cars... has doubled year on year," chief financial officer Mark Wilson told Reuters. "We're now in an area and an environment where we are generating demand in excess of supply."

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Sir Ian Cheshire, the chairman of Barclays' ring fenced UK bank, has quit the board of Whitbread after criticism about the number of directorships he held outside the bank.

He will step down as senior independent director of the Costa Coffee owner on 21 September, to be replaced by outgoing ITV chief executive Adam Crozier.

Barclays has overhauled its operations, to comply with new post-crisis rules forcing British banks to ring-fence their retail operations from their riskier investment banking business.

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If you missed how Manchester businesses have reacted to Monday night's terror attack on Wake Up to Money this morning, download the podcast here.

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The trial of six traders accused of trying to rig the global interest rate benchmark Euribor has been delayed until next year, the FT reports, external.

The five men and one woman were due in court on 4 September, but on Wednesday Judge Gledhill QC ruled the trial would now start on 9 January 2018.

All of the traders have pleaded not guilty to one single charge of conspiracy to defraud between January 1 2005 and December 31 2009 by making or procuring false or misleading Euribor levels to boost trading profits.

Euribor - short for euro interbank offered rate - is the average interest rate at which eurozone banks lend to each other and is used to set trillions of dollars of financial contracts.

The traders include Christian Bittar, once one of Deutsche Bank’s most profitable traders, as well as Philippe Moryoussef a former trader at Barclays. Defendants also include Carlo Palombo, Sisse Bohart, Colin Bermingham and Achim Kraemer.

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Bowling alley chain Hollywood Bowl has seen its half-year earnings surge thanks to rising sales and a revamp of its sites.

Profits at the group, which has 56 centres across the UK, were up 18.5% to £13m for the six months to 31 March. The firm also chalked up a 7.9% rise in revenues to £59.3m.

Image source, Reuters

Speaking of Bitcoin, the digital currency has hit a new record high today above $2,400.

Bitcoin hit a record of $2,409 on the BitStamp platform and was last up 4.3% at $2,363. The price of bitcoin has more than doubled since the start of the year.

"Bitcoin up 100% in under 2 months. Shanghai down almost 10% in same timeframe, compared to most global stocks up. Probably not a coincidence!" tweeted Jeffrey Gundlach, chief executive at DoubleLine Capital.

Strong demand for bitcoins in Japan has also fueled the rise of the virtual currency, which can be moved quickly and anonymously.

Natalie Sherman
New York business reporter

Image source, Reuters

The price of Bitcoin, a digital currency once located at the fringe of finance, has been rising to new records in recent months as digital assets move into the mainstream.

Yesterday the crypto-currency shot past $2,200 (£1,700), more than doubling from just two months ago. And a newer currency, Ethereum, has climbed even faster.

Industry members say uncertainty surrounding the value of global currencies, including the pound, is driving demand for alternative currencies.

The kind of technology that underwrites Bitcoin and newer entrants such as Ethereum, is also gaining, well, currency, as it gets put to new uses by developers and others looking to beef up cyber-security.

Read more here.

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Soft drinks giant Britvic has seen its profits dive 4.9%, due to one-off charges and the recent collapse of the pound.

The Robinsons squash owner said pre-tax profits fell to £38.6m in the 28 weeks to 16 April, from £40.6m in the same period last year. That was despite revenues climbing 11.5% to £756.3m, although with currency effects stripped out the figure was 3.7%.

Britvic, which also bottles Pepsi in the UK, said the recent collapse of the pound was weighing on the firm.

"In all our markets, we have experienced rising costs from underlying cost inflation and in Great Britain we have faced the additional burden from the weakening of sterling leading to further cost increases for raw materials we purchase in either euro or US dollar."

The pound has fallen by about 16% against the dollar since June 2017, pushing up import costs for UK-based businesses.

Image source, Lotus

Lotus, the British sports car maker, is being bought by China's Geely.

The purchase is part of a deal by Geely to buy a 49.9% stake in Malaysian carmaker Proton, which owns Lotus.

Geely, which also owns the London Taxi Company and Sweden's Volvo Car Group, will take a 51% stake in Lotus.

Jean-Marc Gales, who became Lotus chief executive in 2014, has been trying to return the Norwich-based company to profit after two decades in the red.

Read more

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US stocks have opened without a bang as investors await the release of minutes from the Federal Reserve's last meeting.

The Dow Jones index is up 0.01% at 20,940.14, the S&P 500 is 0.05% higher at 2,399.65, and the Nasdaq has gained 0.06% to 6,144.19.

The Federal Open Market Committee decided not to raise interest rates at its last meeting in May, but many analysts expect a hike at its next meeting in June.

As such, they are likely to scour the minutes of May's meeting for evidence to support that theory - and for clues as to when the Fed could raise rates over the course of 2017.

After falling this morning on fears of an economic slowdown in China, the FTSE 100 is now up 20.75 points, or 0.28%, at 7,506.04.

The top two risers are carrier EasyJet, up 3.46%, and Travel firm TUI, up 3.07%.

B&Q owner Kingfisher remains in a slump, having fallen 6.85% after reporting a 0.6% fall in sales at stores open for more than a year.

And Mediclinic International is down 5.12% after it reported a 19% drop in underlying annual earnings.

Image source, Amec Foster Wheeler

Engineering firm Wood Group's attempted £2.2bn takeover of rival Amec Foster Wheeler could be in jeopardy after both companies were dragged into an international corruption investigation, the Telegraph reports., external

According to a circular seen by the newspaper, Amec is co-operating with the Serious Fraud Office over its criminal investigation into alleged bribery and money laundering at Monaco-based Unaoil.

The investigation has already dragged Petrofac into the mix, and investigators want to discover whether bribes were made via third parties to Unaoil.

It could hold up the takeover, although there is no suggestion of wrongdoing from either party.

Image source, PA

The longest criminal trial in the history of the Irish state has collapsed after a judge ordered the acquittal of former Anglo Irish Bank chairman Sean FitzPatrick.

Mr FitzPatrick was accused of misleading the bank's auditors about millions of euros in loans made to him.

The 68-year-old had pleaded not guilty to 27 charges from 2002 and 2007.

On day 126 of the trial, the judge said he would direct the jury to acquit the defendant on Wednesday.

Read more

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The housing market might be struggling, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders, but that isn’t stopping people having a look for a new home, according to the bosses behind Zoopla and Prime Location.

Parent company ZPG said revenues jumped 22% to £117.9m for the six months to end of March, with record breaking traffic of more than 314 million website visits.

The site now hosts 14,271 estate agent branches – up 6%.

However, pretax profits for the period dropped 20% to £22.5m due to takeovers of market intelligence tool HomeTrack and online software provider Expert Agent.

Chief executive Alex Chesterman said: “We remain incredibly excited by the underlying growth across each of the business divisions, our recent acquisitions and the significant cross-sell opportunities to our highly engaged consumer audience and our unrivalled partner base.”

Shares are up 2% to 365.4p.

Image source, Acacia Mining

It seems to all be kicking off in Tanzania today as president John Magufuli sacked his mining minister and chief of the state-run mineral audit agency.

Mr Magufuli is angry at the mining industry over allegations that mining firms have been shipping out undeclared precious metals in an alleged tax evasion scam.

He said an investigation found that Acacia Mining – which is listed on the London Stock Exchange – declared gold, copper and silver in its export itinerary, but were “under-invoicing the actual gold, copper and silver content in those shipping containers”, according to the president.

“The committee [investigating the exports] found that there were many other minerals in those shipping containers that were not declared, such as sulphur, iron, iridium, titanium and zinc,” he added.

The report said it found that in one case a declared 1.1 tonne shipment of gold actually contained up to 15 tonnes.

Acacia Mining deny wrongdoing and say it hasn’t seen the report yet.

Investors are piling out, with shares plunging 12.4% to 380.15p to a five month low.

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Diamond and jewellery purveyor, Tiffany, has revealed a surprise 3% fall in sales in the three months to the end of April.

However, Tiffany’s UK business outperformed its other European operations, with bosses saw an increase in spending by tourists and locals alike.

In the US, the company said the 3% like for like drop was due to the exact opposite reasons – lower spending by tourists and US shoppers.

Worldwide net sales grew 1% to $900m (£694m) thanks to growth in its Asia-Pacific markets and a boost in the wholesale diamond market.

Perhaps suggestions that millennials aren’t buying diamonds isn’t quite true – at least for Tiffany…?

Image source, Ikea

Jesper Brodin will soon take the helm of the flat-pack kings, Ikea, but what do we know about him?

He's definitely an Ikea lifer.

The married father-of-three has been with the firm since 1995, starting out as a purchasing manager in Pakistan, before getting promoted to purchase manager for the whole of South East Asia.

Obviously impressed, the Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad brought him into head office as his executive assistant, where he also helped then chief executive Anders Dahlvig (who would go on to join prestigious boards including Kingfisher and H&M as a non-executive).

Since then he has also been supply and range manager for Ikea Sweden, working there since 2011, before his elevation, which will see him based in Ikea's Dutch headquarters.

According to Ikea, his passion is "music and the sea!" although probably not at the same time.

He has tended to keep himself out of the media spotlight, although Mr Brodin broke cover earlier this month to unveil an initiative in Jordan to employ Syrian refugees to make Ikea rugs.

Brian Milligan
Personal finance reporter

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New figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders reveal something of a collapse in mortgage lending in London.

Homebuyers in the capital borrowed £5.4bn in the first quarter of 2017 – 22% less than in the same period a year ago.

Among people moving house – which excludes first-time buyers – the figure was even more extreme, falling by 35%.

However the figures are distorted by a buying boom in March 2016, just before new stamp duty rules came in. Buy-to-let landlords piled into the market to beat the changes.

The revamped Nokia 3310 phone goes on sale today - but for those of us who are used to smartphones, how easy is it to carry out daily tasks like buying a coffee and finding our way around?

The BBC's technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones finds out.