1. The agreement between Saudi Arabia, Russia, Qatar, and Venezuela to freeze oil production at January levels, has pushed oil prices below $30. Crude oil was treading lower than it had been for weeks at $28.79 per barrel on Wednesday morning.
2. The latest UK unemployment figures are to be released at 9.30am on Wednesday. The UK unemployment rate fell to the lowest in nearly 10 years at 5.2 per cent in the three months to October. There were 31.3 million people in work, 505,000 more than for a year earlier. Joblessness had been expected to remain at 5.3 per cent, where it was a month ago, according to a poll of economists by Reuters.
3. Nicolas Sarkozy, the leader of the conservative opposition Republicans party, has been placed under investigation over alleged irregularities in his 2012 re-election campaign finances, dealing a serious blow to his hopes of running again for the French presidency in 2017. Sarkozy served as the President of France from 2007, before losing to Francois Hollande in 2012.
4. Europe lacks more than €118 billion ($132 billion) needed to dismantle its nuclear plants and manage the waste storage management, a working paper by the European Commission seen by Reuters shows.
5. Metro Bank has cut the asking price and the number of shares on offer in its stock market flotation.
6. Market Tech, a property developer, buys Kings Cross building for £36 million securing a strategic location in the King’s Cross tech belt. The property enables the group to expand their co-working and flexible office operations.
7. Personal details about hundreds of London-based research students were posted online in an apparent breach of data privacy laws. The matter was brought to the BBC's attention by one of the students, who discovered the information could be found via a Google search.
8. Uber is losing a billion dollars a year in China. “We're profitable in the USA, but we're losing over $1 billion a year in China. We have a fierce competitor that's unprofitable in every city they exist in, but they're buying up market share. I wish the world wasn't that way,” Travis Kalanick, CEO, said at a fireside chat at Vancouver's Launch Academy, the city's leading startup hub.
9. Apple announced it was issuing bonds estimated in value at $12 billion on Tuesday, despite a current cash reserve of $215 billion. The tech giant's offer is the largest of several corporate bonds issued on Tuesday after a quiet couple of weeks for the market.
10. Amazon steps up plans to take on the high street as it begins hiring to aid launch of own brand fashion line
